It is a curious psychological fact that all the 'isms,' religious and social, all the faddists and many of the neurotics, tend to take to some form of mind-cure or quackery, the grounds of which are irrational or unproved. They all distrust real science and scientific methods. They are fascinated by the unexplainable. The Baconian inductive method is abhorrent to them, doubtless because their minds are so constituted that they cannot practise it. Had such persons ruled the world in the past, civilisation and scientific progress would have been impossible.

To sum up, most of the modes of mind-cure and the forms in which they occur may be analysed thus:

1. The savage phase, in which the medicine-man' by means of a striking costume, of dogmatic statement and of certain rites, impresses his tribe with the belief that a man suffering from disease can be cured by doing some absurd act which by no possibility can produce any effect but a mental one.

2. An elaborate religious ritual performed in a temple by priest-doctors, which had as adjuncts real means of cure, such as bathing, diet, change of scene, special climate, etc. Those means were used in ancient Egypt and Greece. They produced their effect by persuading the patients that they were to be cured.

3. The use of charms, amulets, sacred emblems, as was practised in Rome and in early Christian times.

4. Purely religious mental effects in addition to some simple physical process, such as anointing with oil, drinking special waters, adopting religious rites, music, washing, etc. This was practised by the early Christians and is carried on to the present day by means of pilgrimages to shrines, sacred wells, etc., by faith-healers,' some religionists and higher thought' believers.

5. Healings through belief in a certain definite theory of disease, such as that matter does not exist, and therefore that neither disease nor physical and mental laws of health exist, as is held by the Christian Scientists.

6. Hypnotism, by which a certain abnormal physiological condition is created in the higher levels of the brain, and thereby physical and often visible local effects are produced through the brain on diseased organs and processes, or by changing morbid desires and habits, or by strengthening will-power.

7. The combined work of the regular medical practitioner and the Christian minister, under medical control, aiding each other in their several spheres, as is carried out in the Emmanuel Movement' in Boston.

8. The mental effects of suggestion, of expectancy, of dogmatic assertion, of rational explanation tending to strengthen the reasoning faculty and will-power, of hopefulness and of cheerfulness. This method is adopted by such skilled scientists as Dubois, Münsterberg, and to some extent by all scientific physicians. It is applicable specially to functional diseases, chiefly of the nervous system. The laws of hygiene, as known to science, are at the same time impressed on the patient and applied to combat his symptoms.

9. Faith in the ordinary skilled and educated physician, he being a man who has at his disposal all the therapeutic agencies known to modern science, the patient believing firmly that such means will effect a cure in a rational and physiological way. Thus the brain and mind aid the local processes of healing.

In short, modern science claims to study and explain the occurrence of so-called 'mind-cures' in diseased and disordered conditions of body. It admits the existence of such cures, but it calls in the brain as the direct agent through which they are brought about. It is now able to point out that there are, in the brain, machinery and activities sufficient to explain them. The mind comes in by setting the brain to work. Science emphatically repudiates the mystical, miraculous, and superstitious views of such mind-cures as being unreasonable and often degrading. Such views, hitherto common, result from ignorance and lend themselves to all sorts of quackery and deceit. Science now includes mind as well as life and matter in the scope of its investigation; and by this means only will humanity derive the full benefits which a study of the effects of mind, acting through the brain, will enable us to effect in curing diseased and abnormal states.

T. S. CLOUSTON.

PEMBE PUBLIC LIBRARY

( 148 )

First

Art. 7.-THE PHILOSOPHY OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. 1. The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Complete and Authorised English Translation. Edited by Dr Oscar Levy. Eighteen vols. Edinburgh and London: Foulis, 1909-11.

2. The Gospel of Superman. The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. By Henri Lichtenberger. Translated from the French by J. M. Kennedy. Edinburgh and London: Foulis, 1910.

3. Die Philosophie' des Als Ob. By H. Vaihinger. Berlin Reuther und Reichard, 1911.

4. The Young Nietzsche. By Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Translated by A. M. Ludovici. London: Heinemann, 1912.

A QUARTER of a century has now elapsed since Friedrich Nietzsche was carried off to the asylum from which the hand of death alone released him; and during this time his fame as a prophet has been steadily growing on the Continent. The completion of the translation of his works into English shows that the invasion of England by a new German prophet is an accomplished fact, and also that, in spite of the freer circulation of ideas in the civilised world, the insulation, if not the insularity, of British thought is still a very real thing. Whether this insulation is natural or acquired, and due to the subtle bias against novelties of thought instilled by the classicism of an educational system which, when it succeeds, represents Aristotle as still the last term of philosophic speculation and, when it fails, produces a profound distrust of general ideas as such, it is unnecessary to discuss. Nietzsche has at last crossed the Channel, and will doubtless be read more extensively and understandingly than his precursors Kant and Hegel, who have never become more than caste-marks to enable the academically trained philosophers to mystify the common herd. Nietzsche's writing, on the other hand, is forcible and direct; he can be read and even understood without the study of a lifetime, and his ideas may even have an influence on conduct. It will not do therefore to pooh-pooh the ideas he stands for as the vapourings of a megalomaniac, while the lapse of

time has rendered it possible to estimate his work with some degree of historical perspective, and to trace its relations to the native developments of British thought.

To begin with, we may dismiss the suggestion that the Nietzschean attitude towards life is sheer lunacy, and therefore unworthy of attention. The origination of new ideas is such a rare event in the history of mankind that we cannot afford to ignore them, even if they turn up in an unexpected quarter. Moreover, we have learnt from William James the shallowness of the medical materialism' which seeks to judge the value of an idea by the physiological condition of its author. It can no longer be maintained without restriction that an idea must be insane because its author was, or that because it is insane it is worthless, and still less that it is therefore unimportant. It is doubtless not true that all genius is mad, but a certain type of genius is apparently closely allied to unsoundness of mind, and certain aspects of civilisation are calculated to drive any thoughtful person mad. Conversely madmen, being less obsessed by conventional valuations, are often the best judges of genius and the first to detect it. It should never be forgotten, for example, that a mad king was needed to convince the world of the excellence of Wagner's music. Who, moreover, will set up as an infallible judge of the sanity of ideas? In matters of philosophy and religion the views actually held diverge so widely that everyone is naturally impelled to suspect the sanity of everyone else's view. Nor could it definitely be proved that we are not all insane; nay, it seems probable that, upon examination, even the most commonplace would be found to cherish some beliefs which the great majority of mankind, or perhaps everyone else, would condemn as mad.

Nietzsche's work needs critical sifting not only on account of its author's unhappy fate, but also by reason of the form which it has taken. Nietzsche, for reasons probably connected with his manner of working, preferred to express his ideas in aphorisms. Now the aphoristic form naturally impels to paradox and exaggeration; and its effects must be freely discounted. Nevertheless it seems probable, especially from the various drafts for what he intended to be his magnum opus, the Will to Power,' that, towards the end of his

career, Nietzsche had gone a long way towards working out his ideas systematically, that his aphoristic style had become a literary device rather than a psychological necessity, and that his thought was really more coherent than he made it appear.

On the other hand, it is also true that Nietzsche has prejudiced his work by greatly over-rating himself. He lived so long alone that he lost what sense of proportion he had once possessed. His autobiography, characteristically entitled 'Ecce Homo,' is a frantic attempt at booming' himself, with more than a touch of megalomania. Now, that men should entertain a higher opinion of themselves than those less intimately acquainted with their work, and should judge themselves by their powers rather than by their achievements, is natural, and perhaps essential to a successful carrying on of the struggle of life. It certainly need not spoil an autobiography, and may even add to its psychological interest, as in the case of Marie Bashkirtseff. But Nietzsche's autobiography is psychologically very disappointing. It throws very little light on the genesis of his character and thought, and exhibits only the prophet's anger at the neglect of an uncomprehending world. It leaves unsatisfied our curiosity as to how a German professor could come to revolt against pedantry; as to how and why the German parson's son, piously brought up in the German analogue to Winchester, Schulpforta, could became a rabid anti-Christian, a pessimist and a Schopenhauer-enthusiast; why subsequently he threw over Schopenhauer as well as Wagner, and set up for himself; why, though he had a widowed mother and an unmarried sister, he preferred to live alone and became a solitary recluse who had fallen out with nearly all his friends. The riddle of his personality is left unsolved by all that has been published, either by him or about him, though there must be some alive who could throw light on some of these questions.

Perhaps that light would illumine too glaringly the holes in the prophet's mantle; but it may well be that Nietzsche revealed the truth when he once wrote to his sister, 'My good friends really know nothing about me, and very possibly have not yet thought about this problem. I myself have always been very reticent about