FATALISM OR FREEDOM 



equipment of explosives, steam shovels, 

 etc., can do so and has repeatedly done It. 

 This result would not have followed in the 

 absence of these causal factors. 



Faith as a motivation of human conduct 

 has been appealed to by mystics from time 

 immemorial. But the mystics have no 

 monopoly of faith. Modern scientific 

 medicine is as little touched by mysticism 

 as is any field of human endeavor; and 

 here is what Osier said about faith : ^ 



"After all, faith is the greatest lever of life. 

 Without it man can do nothing; with it, even 

 with a fragment, as a grain of mustard-seed, all 

 things are possible to him. . . . While we 

 doctors often overlook or are ignorant of our 

 own faith-cures we are just a wee bit too sen- 

 sitive about those performed outside our ranks. 

 We have never had, and cannot expect to have, 

 a monopoly in this panacea, which is open to all 

 free as the sun, and which may make of every 

 one in certain cases, as was the Lacedemonian 

 of Homer's day, *a good physician out of 

 Nature's grace.' Faith in the gods or in the 

 saints cures one, faith in little pills another, 

 hypnotic suggestion a third, faith in a plain 

 common doctor a fourth. In all ages the prayer 

 of faith has healed the sick, and the mental 



1 In 1901. Quoted in Cushing's The Life of Sir 

 William Osiers vol. i, p. 546, Oxford, 1925. 



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