THE NECESSITY OF PROTECTION

Note: A paper, read before members of the Unity League and other guests of Mr. and Mrs. William S. Harbert, at Tre-Brah, Williams Bay, Geneva Lake, Wisconsin, in August, 1898.

It is pertinent to the subject of this book, but was written when the investigations described herein were just beginning.

Progress of Civilisation is accelerated by constantly extending systems of individual, moral, social and sanitary quarantine.

It is not what man adds, for he can add nothing, but what he prevents, that aids growth.

Man creates nothing, but he assists Creation by removing deterrents to growth. Growth is spontaneous, constant and ever stronger if obstructions are removed. Creation does all the growing, but cultivates nothing; the seed falling upon good soil or upon stony waste without other direction than that given by the caprice of the winds.

On the other hand, Man is the only cultivator in Nature, and at the same time he can add nothing to growth—to Creation.

Visible, or conscious, growth consists of cell building or thought producing. Man never has created a cell, neither has he been able to determine the origin of a thought; yet, he is a necessary factor in evolution and a prime factor in cultivation, which is civilisation.

Man removes deterrents to growth. Nature "does the rest."

Thought and cell creation are spontaneous and are never-ceasing if all obstructions are removed from about them. Civilised man places a quarantine against the enemies of growth, of progress, and of harmony, and thereby promotes civilisation.

Man is, therefore, the Chief Assistant to Creation, the Architect of Civilisation and a Full Partner with Nature in Evolution.

This distinction, adequately appreciated, lifts Man above the animal plane and gives him a place among the gods; his material form, composed of muscle, hands, powers of locomotion and speech, being but tools with which to harness and coÖperate with the other forces in Nature, under the direction of the godlike attribute of the Mind, in the removal of deterrents to free growth, and the cultivation of that Harmony which is the symbol of God.

Having assumed as an hypothesis that Man is Full Partner with Nature in Evolution; and having discovered his proper function in the "Division of Labour" in Nature, it is time for each of us to analyse the conditions which environ us as Man units, select those which seem to be useful to our scheme of construction and harmony, declare all deterrents to the growth of our selection to be weeds, and then proceed to remove them without delay, first, by pulling those which now exist, and following that by establishing strict quarantine against them.

I can teach only that which I have learned, and pronounce good only that which has led to happiness. I will therefore note the progress of my own discoveries and describe those which have brought increasing happiness, in order that they may serve as beacons and monuments to such as may seek the same goal along the same lines of inquiry.

The first forty-five years of my present life were spent in seeking happiness by means of personal accumulation. Money, friends, distinction, acquaintance with art in all its various expressions, lands, luxurious homes in favoured localities, pictures, rare porcelains, lacquers and other possessions, isolated for my own use, and for the enjoyment of chosen friends, seemed to be the necessary desiderata of happiness.

In turn, all of these came to me in sufficient abundance to give, at least, a taste of their quality and their efficacy in promoting happiness; but, in the midst of them were always obstructions to unhampered enjoyment, increasing with possession and accumulation of the coveted means, and constantly mocking, as with a mirage, the ultimate ideal desired.

During these forty-five years of quest of happiness there were constantly appearing above the horizon of my search flashes of hope, leading in new directions, which proved in turn to be but will o' the wisps, until the night—the morning—of my awakening, as related in my book "Menticulture."

It was then, for the first time, I heard that it was possible to get rid of anger and worry, the bÊtes noires of my existence, which were, as I then believed and as I now know, the dreaded barriers between me and perfect happiness; not because the mere removal of these particular deterrents to happiness will accomplish happiness, but because the certain result of the removal of any principal mental obstructions leads to the disappearance of contingent errors, and permits freedom of growth of the elements of true happiness.

It is proper to state here the definition of happiness which is the result of my progressive quest. There is only one quality of true happiness, as there can only be one kind of quarantine, and the former is dependent on the latter. If both are not perfect, both fail. True happiness is the evidence and fruit of conscious usefulness, and quarantine against obstructions to normal altruistic energy is the best means of attaining happiness.

In view of the establishment of the status of the Man unit in the Nature-Man partnership, the above definition and assertion may be extended to declare that there can be no genuine happiness short of usefulness in assisting other units to be strong and useful in the partnership of which each is a member.

True happiness cannot exist if there is present an element of indifference.

Next to destructive aggression, indifference, which leads to neglect and waste, is the worst fault that a member of the Nature-Man partnership can be guilty of. Neglect nothing that will aid growth in any useful form, and happiness will surely follow, for Nature and the God of Nature will "do the rest."

In qualifying for the Nature-Man partnership, it is of first importance that our personal equipment should be understood and cared for so as to give us the greatest strength. The body may appropriately be likened to an electric power plant—a Mind-Power Plant; the body being the engine, the stomach the furnace, the arteries and veins the boiler tubes, the blood in circulation the steam, the brain the dynamo, and the mind electricity.

Mind is the all-important factor of our equipment, for it is the commander that will lead and direct better and wiser than we can now imagine if we allow it a chance to act with freedom.

To secure this freedom we must know its habitat, its requirements, its nourishment, and learn to allow it to recharge itself sufficiently and to concentrate itself on its chosen usefulness without imposing upon it also the drudgery of useless work. This must be done with the same idea of economy that a chef is relieved of the drudgery of washing dishes and emptying slops.

According to Dr. Edward Hooker Dewey, a pharmacist, army surgeon and tireless investigator of forty-five years' experience, whose revelations have been before the medical profession of the world for many years without a single challenge, the brain is a dynamo which accumulates energy during sleep, and uses it during the waking hours of its possessor.

The brain manages everything for man that he accomplishes. It brings messages from the Creator, which are sometimes called intuition, sometimes inspiration, and by various other names. Emerson calls these messages the "Over-Soul." My own appreciation of the attribute that distinguishes the Spiritual Man from the animal man is better satisfied by the name "Spiritual Cerebration," which I have defined in my book "Happiness" as: "Intelligence not derived from experience, principally obtained during sleep, and, seemingly supernaturally clear to consciousness on awaking in the natural manner."

The brain also directs all action, and, with encouragement, will take up the messages from the Creator and analyse, arrange, and develop them into useful accomplishments, and then file them away in the archives of the memory as additions to the equipment which is necessary to greatness in the pursuit of usefulness.

Dr. Dewey gives the bill of fare of the brain in seeking its own nourishment, and also describes the work it performs in transforming the fuel we supply it with into the tissues on which it feeds.

This is undoubtedly a very important discovery and locates the source of strength and teaches how to conserve it.

I will not give the technical bill of fare of the brain, for you would not remember it better than I do, but it is all composed of tissues of the body, fat predominating to the quantity of ninety-seven per cent, but the important announcement is that neither the brain itself nor any of the nervous centres diminish during consumption of tissue, neither do they lose any of their power, even in cases of what is called starvation, up to the point of death, when all of the fatty and muscular tissues of the body are wasted away, leaving the brain and nerve centres to flicker and go out, as a candle does, brighter than usual with the parting flash of their brilliancy.

Dr. Dewey gives President Garfield as an illustrious example of proof of the accuracy of his deduction. The martyr President lived eighty days without the addition of an ounce of nutriment to his life, carried the usual clearness of mind to the last moment, and passed on only when the last muscular tissue had been consumed by the brain.

Dr. Dewey's assertion that starvation, so-called, is never a cause of disease, and never dangerous to life and health until there is no more tissue left on which to feed the brain and other nerve centres, was published some years ago and I have the authority of the Doctor himself that his contention has not been once disputed by the medical profession. Three eminent English physicians, Drs. A. M. Haig, George S. Keith and A. Rabigliati, and many American physicians, have experimented with what is called starvation for the cure of chronic diseases which have their origin in excess of inharmonious deposits caused by overeating or careless eating. The results in all instances recorded have been successful in modifying or curing the disease.

When patients have understood that they were suffering no injury from not taking food they have ceased to have hunger cravings. These hunger cravings usually come from fear or from disorder caused by fermenting food in an overloaded stomach.

We can, then, on undisputed and practical authority, treat craving for food or drink as a disease and therefore not rational, and starvation as merely drawing upon the stored fuel—fatty tissue—by the dynamo of the brain, restorable at will at any time before complete exhaustion, without injury— with benefit, in fact—to the machinery of the body.

The brain must first turn food into tissue, and then derive its own nourishment from the tissue. If the right quantity of nourishment can be introduced into the stomach, if the quality is of the right kind, and if it is fed into the furnace of the stomach with relatively the same wisdom that a competent fireman uses in feeding his furnace, the brain is required to use the least possible effort in this direction, and has its stored energy available for directing other useful action and serving the partnership which employs it with an efficiency, the possibility of which may be well illustrated by the herculean accomplishments of the battleship "Oregon" in the late war in steaming thirteen thousand miles and engaging in a great battle without a stop or an accident, and without "starting" a rivet.

I will not tell you much of what Dr. Dewey has revealed, because I want you to read all he has written,[18] as well as the books of the English physicians mentioned, but I must say this much: Very little digestion goes on during sleep, and, whether it does or not the brain has from sixty to one hundred days' nourishment stored up within each of us, and can feed on that without inconvenience to us, except in the form of what is called habit craving or imaginary hunger, for the whole of that time. A person who has been without food for an unusual time, if he does not gorge his stomach when the first opportunity of breaking the fast arrives, is not only better for the rest the brain has had, but the health does not suffer in any way.

It is, then, no serious deprivation to ask a person to go without what we call breakfast—the getting-up or habit-craving—and give the brain a chance to clean up the remnants of the last day's supply of food fuel, and express new desires in an earned appetite. There is available, on waking from sleep, a fresh charged brain ready to serve its proprietor with great efficiency. Incidentally it has to do some "chores," rake out the clinkers, dispose of the ashes, relieve the grate bars, attend to any little repairs, brush out the chimney and generally get ready for the work of another day.

The hunger of the morning is necessarily but a habit-hunger. The best evidence of this is that, when busily employed, we forget it without trouble; and also is that European peoples, where the disease dyspepsia is not known in the list of physical derangements, perform the chief physical or mental effort of the day before their breakfast, the morning coffee scarcely meaning anything in the way of what we call a meal.

Dr. Dewey's firm assertion is that when the stomach has had a chance to "clean up" and is ready for more fuel, it will make it known in healthy manner by a healthy appetite, and that it is rarely normal before noon; and not really before one has done what might be called a "day's work."

I can assert boldly, as the result of experience, that the time to get work out of the brain is between the morning awakening and the first meal, and it is the same relative to endurance draughts on the physical strength.

Then, in the heat or the glare of the day, having accomplished something useful and disposed of pressing duties, so as not to feel the irritation of hurry, the first meal of the day can be taken with restful ease and it will be found that the supply demanded by the appetite will not be so great as that demanded by the unhealthful, habit-inflamed early morning call.

It may not seem so, but this digression from psychics to physics is very germane to my subject and to my own experience.

Without knowing that Dr. Dewey and the other eminent physicians who endorse his theories were living in the world, I, in the summer of 1894, blundered into a personal experience of diet that produced wonderful results which I now recall with all the vividness of the high lights of extreme pleasure met in foreign travel.

I was in a Southern city for two months during an unusually hot summer, watching some developments that could not be hurried, and the fruition of which was important to my interests. I had nothing to do in connection with this business but to "watch and wait."

I had some writing to do, however, in the mean time, which could not be well or comfortably done in the heat of the day, hence I arose at daylight and began to write. At that time of the morning nothing to eat was to be had, which compelled me to start work without it. My subject was an absorbing one, so that, once under way, I would not be diverted until I had "written myself out;" or in other words, had exhausted the consideration of the morning messages which I now designate "Spiritual Cerebration."

It happened, under these circumstances, that my habit-hunger was not given a hearing and it was nearly noon before I felt the fatigue or even the heat of the burning day, for I worked in my pajamas, and had no time to look at the thermometer, to get an exaggerated suggestion of heat by which to start my blood chasing itself through my veins.

I not only noticed that my midday breakfast was a deliciously grateful meal, but that appetite became satisfied far short of the formally customary abnormal early morning gorge, and, what was more remarkable yet, I wanted nothing during the rest of the day, and not even until midnight, except, after vigorous exercise of some sort, I might desire a little fruit or a bit of bread or cracker; but never a full course dinner.

I wore a belt at my trousers, as was the custom of the place, and in a few days decreased the girth of my corpulency one hole in the belt; and before the summer was over, four holes, with only the most comfortable feeling accompanying the loss of weight.

When my family returned from Europe, I settled back into the American and English habit of a meat breakfast, because I did not want to be "different," and at the same time I half doubted but that my experience was nothing more than an abnormal one, attributable to the inertia of summer heat, literary absorption and lack of physical exercise.

Twice, when I have been left alone since then, away from the restraint of custom, and also in the midst of abundant athletic exercise, I have again cultivated the same habit of missing breakfast through desire to do early morning work, with the same splendid results.

The last time referred to is the present. My search for a lost waif through the framing of an appeal for him, has given me such absorbing thought that meals have been of no consideration beside it, and in the midst of it I find Dr. Dewey's book, the books of the English physicians indorsing him; and have secured results of health, comfort and strength to myself which I did not know I possessed; to corroborate my accidental experience. As I said before, this seems a very wide digression from the psychical to the physical, but it is really no digression at all, for it is in the service of the brain, and the brain is the direct agent of communication between the Creator and our consciousness, assisting us to work together in the Nature-Man partnership with useful efficiency.

Now, let me return to the aim of my address, and pursue the thread of my personal experience in search of the fundamental principles of True Living, which, to be proven, must be vouched for and tested by resultant happiness.

When I attacked the tap-roots of trouble and shut the door in the face of anger and worry for ever, I saw among the bones of their decomposition the skeleton of fear. It proved to be their backbone. Fear, then, was the support of all the deterrent passions that beset brightest manhood and womanhood and pursue it to an untimely death.

My book "Happiness" deals with the separation of fearthought from forethought in order to show that it is possible to smother a vital stimulant of energy with a resemblance of it which is as deadly a poison as carbonic acid gas.

While I have been engaged in pursuing germs of disorder to their beginnings, during the past three or four years, I have uncovered many a beautiful possession that formerly I did not appreciate. Appreciation of the full value of Appreciation is one of these discoveries of priceless value and usefulness. I have spoken of this in "Happiness," but not as much as it deserves, for it truly is "The Appreciation of God and of Good that gives birth to Love, and which is the only true and adequate measure of wealth."

Nothing else, however, in the whole quest, has approached the beauty of the love for children that has come to me; the appreciation of them as Messages from the Creator, consigned to the cultivation of the environment society provides for them; as likely as not, any one of them bringing into the world a great intelligence by means of the humblest of parents.

During observation of social questions in Europe, my interest has been drawn constantly to children, as by a powerful magnet, so that when I was called back to this country to attend to a detail of business and met the adventure which is the cause of my present focalised interest in neglected ones, as expressed in a book to be called, when published, "That Last Waif; or, Social Quarantine,"[19] it was but natural that I should put all the force of my sympathy into the cause of rescue, and that I should find in that service more happiness than in any of the luxurious amusements which had claimed me as a devotee in times gone by.

True happiness is the result of conscious usefulness. This I can assert with the confidence of knowledge, not alone from my own experience, but from observation of the great army of kindergartners and child-savers whom I have met in my travels, and especially within the past year; and it is evident that the service attaching to protecting little neglected angels from the evil suggestions and the cruel conditions that may make of them, not men, but beasts, is one of the avenues of usefulness in which these "Angels of the State" meet with the smile of the Master, who was the first Great Kindergartner; whose teachings centred about and dwelt upon the care of children as of first consideration, and who said, "Suffer Little Children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."

Childhood has suffered, manhood has suffered, progress has suffered, for lo! these ages, the cruel assumption that mankind is naturally depraved. In recent years public conscience has been dulled by the anÆsthetic that there must be a Have-To-Be-Bad Class in all communities. This has been formulated into the assumption that there is in every group of the Heaven-Sent Angels of Purity, a full ten per cent that must be depraved and unredeemable except by the interposition of special dispensation, which is a direct contradiction of all of the observed Laws of Creation to which intelligence now subscribes. The motto of this assumption is couched in this vicious legend: "The hopelessly submerged ten per cent stratum of society."

Half an hour's walk from this hospitable mansion, on the shore of the beautiful Geneva Lake, is a place called "Holiday Home." There are now housed and thoughtfully cared for at the "Home" about one hundred of the "Hopelessly Submerged Ten Per Cent Stratum of (Chicago's) Society." During the summer half a thousand of these unfortunates will come for two weeks each. When we touched at the wharf last evening after coming from the concert given in their interest at Mr. Chalner's lakeside home, the waifs met us with a merry class-yell, and greeted us with an intelligence, a buoyancy, and a freedom, born of their holiday, such as was not excelled at any of the other landings where only the children of rich summer residenters were met. We all saw these "waifs" and we marvelled at them, for, with the grime of the slum washed from their sweet faces, and with clean, though sometimes ragged clothing, they might have figured in the mix-up of "Pinafore," or have starred in a dramatic representation of the "Prince and the Pauper," with all the grace required of princelings.

They haven't been long from God, and they are god-like or not, as we have welcomed and protected them, or rebuffed or neglected them.

Let me assure you in the most practical way that there are two sides to this child question. There is a sentimental side, than which there is no other so worthy; and there is a practical side, than which there is none so profitable.

The best and most profitable service in the whole gamut of useful occupations that I know about is in learning to know children, and in connection with a Quarantine movement which is now started, and which aims to not let one of these wards of the Christ escape the best care known to Love and the Science of Child-Life.

The crÈche and the kindergarten and the manual training schools, and domestic training classes, as well as institutions similar to the "Holiday Home" across the Bay, have demonstrated within the past thirty years that fully ninety-eight per cent of the "Hopelessly Submerged Ten Per Cent" can be rescued after they have been warped by evil surroundings. What will not the same effort effect if directed toward prevention and protection, instead of being squandered in careless and soulless correction?

Christ said: "And a little child shall lead them." Let us awake to the call. It is the way to Heaven; for, "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."

FIVE YEARS' CONFIRMATORY EVIDENCE

The spirit of the preceding address to the good members of the Unity League organisation on the shores of beautiful Lake Geneva has been the inspiring motive of the quest for scientific endorsement of Economic Nutrition for the benefit of the present generation of children, and, incidentally, of their elders. In Economic Nutrition lies protection from sexual morbidity, alcoholic intemperance, bodily disease, savage passions and all the brood of evil contamination and temptation. In Economic Nutrition lie possibilities of physical and mental energy and optimistic happiness such as the world has not been accustomed to in the memory of history. Economic Nutrition is what children want to be taught with their first indelible impressions, and the present great movement of which this little book treats, for which it was first responsible, and for which it is republished in a new and extended edition, is expected to furnish authoritative knowledge relative to the most Economic Nutrition, so that mothers and kindergartners may meet the little waifs from the Creator on the threshold of this present life with words of wisdom and examples of sanitary perfection, instead of confronting them at once with the poison of ignorance relative to their most important concern,—their own Economic Nutrition.

That the contentions uttered in "That Last Waif; or, Social Quarantine," referred to in the Lake Geneva Address, are reasonable is evidenced by the experience of Dr. and Mrs. Kellogg and their adopted family of twenty-four waifs, the acquaintance of which has since been made.

All of the altruists who have engaged in kindergardenry among the neglected, Dr. Barnardo, Dr. Kellogg and the rest, are full of confidence in the possibility and efficacy of a perfect quarantine as outlined in "That Last Waif." It is an Epicurean method of promoting Menticulture, killing Fearthought, denouncing Gluttony, saving that Last Waif, and attaining Happiness through learning the A.B.-Z. of Our Own (Economic) Nutrition.