Mental Chemistry summary

Mental chemistry is defined as the science of the changes which conditions undergo through the operations of the mind. Just as physical chemistry produces invariable results through the orderly combination of materials, so mental chemistry produces invariable results: the same thought is always followed by the same consequence. The principle of causation resides not in the individual mind but in the Universal Mind, upon which the individual acts and reacts. The chapter traces humanity's ascent from primordial fear and hostility to modern confidence and mental control, all wrought by the slow dawn of Understanding, and argues that thought literally builds organic structures. citing the eye, the giraffe's neck, birds' wings, Loeb's aphides, Gates's guinea pigs, and Harvard's weighing board as laboratory evidence. It distinguishes the conscious mind (individual awareness) from the subconscious (storehouse and faithful servant), illustrated by the child learning piano, and describes a fathomless sea of plastic mind substance that takes form according to mental demand. Under the supreme law of cause and effect, the cosmos strives toward harmony, and thought operates on infinite planes to which we become responsive according to the nature of our thinking. The reader is invited to prove all this by direct experiment. becoming receptive by stilling the senses. and the chapter closes with a meditation on the near-infinite refinement of matter, from atom to electron, culminating in Ether and Pranic Energy as the prime essentials of life for body, mind, and spirit.

This chapter traces the ascent of intelligence from its universal source through mineral, vegetable, and animal life, arguing that mind is not a late arrival in nature but is potential in the very electron. Beginning with the ether as the substratum of all phenomena, the author follows the intelligent, involuntary process by which atoms combine into molecules, molecules into cells, and cells into the vast federated republic of the human body. twenty-six trillion living, conscious entities co-ordinated under one central brain. Drawing on Stockwell, Dolbear, Haeckel, Huxley, Quevli, Bergson, and Edison, it presents the cell as a genuinely intelligent, self-sacrificing citizen and the body as a civil community whose health depends on harmony and whose disease is dissociated action. The chapter culminates by identifying the true product of this cosmic chemistry: thought. Because thought is non-material, it must be spiritual; and because spirit is the creative principle of the Universe, and the part shares the nature of the whole, thought itself must be creative.

Presenting the human body as a network of chemical manufacturing plants, this chapter unites laboratory science with the laws of mind. It shows how the internal secretions of the ductless glands. the pituitary, thyroid, and adrenals. govern physical growth, mental development, and the whole equilibrium of the organism, citing Osler and the pioneering endocrinologists Starling and Bayliss. Thought itself is described as a vibratory, creative force, radiant energy setting the finest spiritual magnetism in motion until it reaches physical matter. The chapter then maps the two nervous systems: the cerebro-spinal, the telephone system of the conscious mind, and the sympathetic, the apparatus of the subconscious, centered in the solar plexus. It concludes that our emotions are not idle feelings but chemical and vibratory agents. positive ones constructive, negative ones destructive of the body's health.

This chapter presents the Law of Attraction as a universal, ever-active creative force. mental chemistry. that governs all existence, from the sweep of the planets to the cohesion of minerals and the growth of plants. The author demonstrates that this law is neutral: it flows in conjunction with the desires of the individual, bringing to maturity both the bitter and the sweet, illustrated by the grafting of cultivated apples onto a wild crab tree fed by a single sap. Life itself is revealed as chemical action, with the mind as the laboratory and each person the chemist whose thoughts. destructive or constructive, negative or positive. determine the conditions of body and life. Growth proceeds through three sections: creatures of law, users of law, and finally masters of law, as we move from unconscious to conscious to conscious use of conscious power. The chapter closes by affirming that harmony comes only through compliance with Natural Law, and that a new civilization of liberated thought and spiritual power is dawning.

This chapter establishes Mind as the creative center from which all activity and environment proceed, arguing that thought is a real, law-governed force parallel to atomic affinity and physical currents. Drawing on the science of vibration. showing that sound, light, and color exist only as sensations in consciousness produced by rates of motion. the author demonstrates that appearances exist for us only in the mind, and that one principle governs all existence through an exact law of giving and receiving. Growth is portrayed as a reciprocal exchange, and difficulties as necessary instruments of development. The chapter then rises to metaphysics, likening spirit to a musician and the human brain to an instrument that must be brought into tune before spirit can express harmony. It closes with the evolutionary vision of humanity gradually perfecting the brain until the cosmic spirit. of which each person is a conscious atom. can speak clearly and establish real harmony on earth.

This chapter frames abundance as an immutable universal law, as demonstrable as the laws of steam, electricity, and gravitation. Just as electricity produced no benefit until its law was recognized and applied, so the law of abundance yields its riches only to those who understand it and bring themselves into harmony with it. The author argues that thought is the vital creative energy, setting up vibrations in the ether that ultimately produce physical results. Because every thought engages physical brain tissue, sustained thinking on a subject literally reconstructs a person, transmuting failure into success and rebirthing the individual in spirit. The most powerful forces in nature are invisible, and man's most powerful force is likewise his invisible spiritual force, which can only manifest through thinking. Success comes by operating on the creative (never competitive) plane through the silent law of attraction rather than the destructive law of force. Recognition of abundance develops six moral qualities. Courage, Accumulation, Constructiveness, Sagacity, Tact, Loyalty, and Individuality. all moods of creative thought. Since over 90 percent of mental activity is subconscious, mastery lies in tapping this vast storehouse. The chapter closes affirming that mental power is the Creator's provision for the emancipation of mankind, sealed by Van Dyke's poem 'Thoughts Are Things.'

Attainment traces power to its source in the nervous system, which the author presents as the instrument through which Universal Mind expresses itself. Just as a telegraph transforms and conveys electricity, the nerve cells and fibres transform and convey a subtler energy that is Mind itself. Two systems. the Cerebro-spinal (conscious, seated in the brain) and the Sympathetic (subconscious, seated in the solar plexus). together form the gateway between matter and spirit. Because possession begins in consciousness, and because thought is a creative force, our whole experience of life is governed by the quality and habit of our thinking. The chapter culminates in a graded ascent of consciousness. simple, self, and cosmic. showing that as consciousness develops, power develops in the subjective and manifests in the objective, and that intuition is the crowning phase in which Universal Mind delivers truth directly to the awakened Ego.

Building upon the earlier progression from chemistry and biology toward the finer forces of mind, this chapter turns at last to the thinker himself. the agent who wields the creative power of thought. It argues that thought is a real, measurable, law-governed force, demonstrable by experiment: every human work exists first as a mental image, and each man's outer conditions are largely the projection of his inner world. Distinguishing disciplined, concentrated thought from idle reverie, the author invites the reader to prove the law upon himself by steadily holding a chosen quality in mind. Finally, the science of the thinker is presented not as the enemy of religion but as its natural vestibule, leading the honest investigator upward toward recognition of the creative principle within. The chapter closes with Christian D. Larson's 'Promise Yourself' resolutions offered as a practical program of mental discipline.

This chapter argues that industry and wealth, like every other phenomenon in nature, are governed by immutable law rather than chance. The prosperity concentrated in a small creative minority proves that financial conditions obey a discoverable principle. one open to universal compliance. Resolving the apparent oppositions of physical, mental, moral, and industrial life into single unified principles, the author shows that Labor and Capital are but two aspects of one thing: Industry. Wealth itself is revealed to be fluid rather than fixed. gold being merely a measure and money a circulating token. so that abundance flows only where money is kept in motion and hoarding produces stagnation and want. Because wealth is so susceptible to the creative power of thought, and because the creative instinct is the reflection of the Universal Creative Principle within each person, the chapter forecasts a coming era of industrial emancipation and overlapping abundance, illustrated by Henry Ford's vision of renewable power and Helen Wilmans's teaching that the kingdom of heaven lies in the undeveloped faculties of the mind.

Economics is redefined as the science of the laws governing ideas and their expression on the material plane, since every form of wealth and its distribution originates in thought. The chapter argues that intelligence rules a universe of immutable law, and that the mind, being the builder of every house, book, and picture, must be understood before conditions of life can be improved. Marden warns that nations rise and fall on two-thousand-year cycles and that Europe's collapse into the ruin of the World War came because leaders prized organic chemistry over mental chemistry. ignoring that force meets force and that a higher law always governs a lower. He mounts a sustained attack on alcohol and the liquor traffic as instruments for reducing citizens to economic and spiritual slavery by preventing them from thinking, marshaling testimony that Prohibition saved lives and improved welfare. Quoting Burton and Babson, he insists the spiritual factor. purpose, motive, desire. is the true source of prosperity, land, labor, capital, and education being mere tools for good or evil. The chapter culminates in a practical method: the systematic combining of concepts, whereby exhaustive inventories of a field are cross-related to generate an ever-multiplying fountain of new ideas capable of solving any problem, and closes with Browning's verse locating Truth within.

Beginning with the testimony of Osler and Clarke, this chapter shows that medicine has always leaned upon faith and, increasingly, upon chemistry. yet insists that human ailment is a mental problem before it becomes a physical one. Worry disorganizes digestion, small local disturbances may deepen into disease that threatens the whole organism, and the true remedy lies not in suppressing symptoms but in obedience to Nature's law. Drawing on Lindlahr's Nature Cure Philosophy, the author frames disease as Nature's corrective effort and health as harmonious vibration. Life itself is reconceived: the materialist view of life as mere chemical combustion is declared obsolete, replaced by the vital conception of a Divine Energy animating every atom. Since modern physics reveals the atom to be not solid matter but whirling charges of electricity, all things. thought and diamond alike. are modes of vibration, and health becomes harmonious, disease discordant, vibration in conformity with Nature's law.

This chapter advances mental medicine as a lawful, universal principle of healing. Drawing on Thomson Jay Hudson, it argues that the body is a confederation of intelligent cells governed by a central mental energy; disease is a failure of that energy, and every therapeutic agent. material or mental. works only insofar as it re-energizes the controlling mental organism. Professor Clouston lends physiological weight by establishing the brain cortex as the supreme regulator of all bodily functions. Documented cases follow: Dr. Barkas's patient cured by distilled water administered with confident assurance, Dr. Morrison's hysteric cured by plain conversation, and Schofield's tally of 250 organic cures at a single London chapel. The chapter closes by pressing physicians to acknowledge the healing 'faith' they already exploit, and predicts a silent revolution that will restore mental therapeutics to its rightful place in medicine.

Taking Metchnikoff's ideal of orthobiosis. a life lived fully and rationally to its natural term. as its starting point, this chapter argues that true healing must unite the physical and the spiritual. Faith has a physical center, disease may have a spiritual origin, and man is at once rooted in heaven and earth. Surveying history from Hippocrates and Mondeville to Osler, the author insists that the sanest healers honor every school and employ every constructive agency, seeking causes rather than merely treating effects. The chapter culminates in a detailed anatomy of the subconscious as a divinely engineered mechanism. cell chemists, glands, digestive tract, supply department, and a subconscious 'wireless'. that objectifies the thoughts fed to it, and which the conscious mind can master once attuned to the Universal Mind.

This chapter presents Biochemistry as the science of vital processes, founded upon the cell theory and the principle of matter's infinite divisibility. Drawing on Schuessler's study of the blood, it holds that the body is composed of eleven inorganic cell-salts, and that health is simply the presence of these tissue-salts in right proportion, while disease is a deficiency of one or more. The cells feed themselves, accepting only what they need. Extending this material foundation, Littlefield traces all form back to the grouping of electrons in the molecule, arguing that Divine Mind-Images precede physical development, so that idealism is more probable than materialism. Carey concludes that disease is not a thing but a lack of dynamic molecules, that air (spirit) unites with minerals to create blood with every breath, and that by increasing the supply of cell-salts to the brain, dormant cells are resurrected and man perceives with spiritual understanding.

Drawing on C. Harry Brooks's account of Dr. Emile Coue's celebrated clinic at Nancy, this chapter presents suggestion and auto-suggestion as demonstrable laws of mind. Coue insists he heals no one. patients discover the instruments of well-being within themselves, obeying the principle that whatever the conscious mind repeats with confidence, the unconscious accepts and transforms into reality. Vivid clinic scenes (the tottering man who runs, the blacksmith who lifts his arm) show the method in action, while supporting testimony from Weltmer, the tobacco-cured Mr. Seaward, and a wireless-telegraphy analogy of mental 'tuning' argue that directed, constructive thought governs health, habit, salesmanship, and every creative achievement.

Beginning with Shakespeare's prescient plea to "minister to a mind diseased," this chapter presents psycho-analysis as the science of locating and eradicating buried mental causes of suffering. Complexes and phobias, it argues, arise when the subconscious retains a forgotten shock while the conscious mind disguises it behind a more dignified explanation. Through free association, dream interpretation, and confession, the analyst brings the original trauma to the surface, where mere recognition often dissolves it. just as a surgeon removes a foreign body and lets nature heal. Illustrated by Dr. Hugh T. Patrick's cases of a fearless boxer, sheep rancher, and policeman all felled by hidden fear, and by the woman cured through repeatedly telling her buried memories, the chapter insists that the subconscious tends always toward health and harmony when the conscious mind lets go of anxiety. It concludes that recurring emotions such as anger imprint habitual grooves in the subconscious that ripen into physical disease. so that, thoughts being causes and conditions effects, the mastery of thought is the mastery of health.

Psychology, this chapter argues, has traditionally studied only the conscious, self-conscious mind, yet this is but a fraction of the whole. Beneath it lies the subconscious, an intelligence of high order that governs the automatic processes of the body and, deeper still, merges into a universal or cosmic consciousness. The author distinguishes the two mental departments. conscious and subconscious. by their nervous systems (cerebro-spinal and sympathetic) and demonstrates through the analogy of stirred water that the subconscious accumulates whatever the conscious mind repeatedly entertains, building habit and shaping environment. Because mind is a creative spiritual activity, the thoughts we hold. constructive or destructive. take root and reflect themselves in our experience under an immutable law. The chapter concludes with the practical technique of affirmation and denial: constructive thoughts displace destructive ones, and denial withdraws creative vitality from unsatisfactory conditions, terminating them gradually according to the law of growth.

Metaphysics extends the laws of chemistry into the realm of mind: as gases combine by affinity to make new substances, so thoughts combine by affinity to clothe themselves in form, producing germs both constructive and destructive that flourish only where they find congenial soil. Because the Universe is a Cosmos governed by immutable law, and matter exists in graded refinements. from crude solid to ether to Psychic or Mind Force. the mind may lawfully govern its own microcosm, the "Temple of the Living God." The metaphysician heals not by reaching the reasoning objective mind through the senses, but by contacting the Universal, subjective, or Divine Mind, whose organ in the body is the sympathetic nervous system and whose realization of perfection is manifested in the patient. The chapter then anchors this power in the nature of Truth, defined as the absolute and changeless. like "three times three equals nine". the only possible knowledge, provable only by demonstration. It closes by comparing Eastern initiatory discipline with the coming Western study of spiritual metaphysics, warning that attainment brings obligation and that the "resurrection" is the elevation of the mind from the material plane to the spiritual, with suffering the sure penalty for violating spiritual law.

This chapter marks the culmination of the book's argument, drawing physical science to its highest conclusion: that the ultimate essence of energy is Mind or Will. Citing Fleming, Leland, and Dods, it argues that science and religion are not adversaries but allies, both pointing to an Infinite trinity of Wisdom, Will, and Power that science can name only as God. Tracing matter from molecules to atoms to electrons. and observing through radioactivity that matter is in constant flux rather than indestructible. the author identifies Mind as the director controlling the ion and shaping form, making creation itself a mental process. Mind is shown to be present from the protoplasmic cell to the highest human self-consciousness, growing spiritually through use, while Dods's ascending scale of substances from lead to electricity concludes that the final, self-moving substance is the Infinite Mind that animates all things.

This chapter, rendered as a poem by Frances Polle, presents Silence not as mere absence of sound but as the primal creative medium out of which the Universe itself was conceived. It counsels the reader to still the senses and surrender in willing abandon to Nature, for only in that quietude does the mind recover forgotten mysteries and rise to a knowledge of the earth's secrets, the birth of stars, and the rhythm of the revolving spheres. The culminating truth revealed in the Silence is Love, named as the silent comforter and the prototype toward which all living things strive for union.

This concluding chapter argues that religion and science are not adversaries but converge upon a single truth: that thought is a creative force governed by immutable law. Beginning with the reconciliation of scripture and modern research, the author reframes prayer as the lawful operation of the subconscious impressing patterns upon the creative energy of the universe. The Creative Principle is impersonal and unfailing. answering prayer not by caprice but by exact law, just as gravitation or electricity does. Thinking, imagination, visualization, concentration and love are all shown to be spiritual, creative activities, capable of producing either good or evil depending upon our understanding of the law. Tracing the shift from the deductive, anthropomorphic God of the Old Testament to the immanent, subjective God taught by Jesus, the chapter contends that the Nazarene employed the inductive method. reasoning from within. and taught that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us. The author examines the human, historical construction of the Bible to distinguish inherited superstition from living truth, and closes with a vision of a religion of reason: one that cooperates for peace, judges by fruits, and satisfies both brain and heart as the natural culmination of science.