THE MODERN OCCULT. 461 



error and misapplied partial knowledge. It is not necessary to go back 

 to early civilizations or to primitive peoples, among whom the medicine- 

 man and the priest were one and alike appealing to occult powers, nor 

 to early theories of disease which beheld in insanity the obsession of 

 demons and resorted to exorcism to cast them out; it is not necessary to 

 consider the various personages who acquired notoriety as healers by 

 laying on of hands or by appeal to faith, or who like Mesmer introduced 

 the system of Animal Magnetism, or like some of his followers, sought 

 directions for healing from the clairvoyant dicta of somnambules; it is 

 not necessary to ransack folk-lore superstitions and popular remedies 

 for the treatment of disease; for the modern forms of 'irregular 1 healing 

 offer sufficient illustrations of occult methods of escaping the ills that 

 flesh is heir to. 



The existence of a special term for a medical impostor is doubtless 

 the result of the prevalence of the class thus named, but quackery and 

 occult medicine though mutually overlapping, can by no means be held 

 accountable for one another's failings. Many forms of quackery pro- 

 ceed on the basis of superstitions or fanciful or exaggerated notions con- 

 taining occult elements, but for the present purpose it is wise to limit 

 attention to those in which this occult factor is distinctive; for medical 

 quackery in its larger relations is neither modern nor occult. Occult 

 healing takes its distinctive character from the theory underlying the 

 practice rather than from the nature of the practice. It is not so much 

 what is done as why it is done or pretended to be done or not done, that 

 determines its occult character. A factor of prominence in modern 

 occult healing is indeed one that in other forms characterized many of 

 its predecessors and was rarely wholly absent from the connection be- 

 tween the procedure and the result; this is the mental factor, which may 

 be called upon to give character to a theory of disease, or be utilized 

 consciously or unconsciously as a curative principle. It is not implied 

 that 'mental medicine' is necessarily and intrinsically occult, but only 

 that the general trend of modern occult notions regarding disease may 

 be best portrayed in certain typical forms of 'psychic' healing. The 

 legitimate recognition of the importance of mental conditions in health 

 and disease is one of the results of the union of modern psychology and 

 modern medicine. An exaggerated and extravagant as well as pre- 

 tentious and illogical over-statement and misstatement of this principle 

 may properly be considered as occult. 



Among such systems there is one which by its momentary prominence 

 overshadows all others, and for this reason as well as for its more ex- 

 plicit or rather extended statement of principles, must be accorded spe- 

 cial attention. I need hardly say that I refer to that egregious mis- 

 nomer, Christian Science. This system is said to have been discov- 

 ered by or revealed to Mrs. Mary Baker Glover Eddy in I860. Several 



