The Kabalistic Justice and Paul's Righteousness of Faith. Ap- THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. CHAPTER I. WHAT ARE IDEAS? AND WHAT IS IDEALISM? As idealism in opposition to materialism constitutes the philosophic basis on which the psychological or phrenopathic system of cure rests, it is necessary at the outset of our inquiries to form a clear conception of what is meant by that term. Its principles are unanswerably set forth in the work of Bishop Berkeley, entitled The Principles of Human Knowledge, published in the year 1710. The doctrines taught by Berkeley were subsequently presented under modifications by a succession of German philosophers, among whom we prominently name Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer. According to Lossius, "Idealism is the assertion that matter (and consequently the human body) is only a sensuous seeming, and that spiritual essences are the only real things in the world." This doctrine was taught by Plato, who derived it from Pythagoras and the occult philosophy of Egypt, Chaldea, and India. It is as old as the human race. From the remotest antiquity, it was taught in the Vedas and in all the Oriental philosophies. Says Krug: "Idealism is that system of philosophy which considers the existent or actual as a mere ideal." The definition of Brockhaus is to the same effect: "Idealism, in antithesis to realism, is that philosophical system which maintains not only that the spiritual or ideal is the original, but that it is the sole ac tuality; so that we can concede to the objects of the senses no more than the character of a phenomenal (or apparent) world, educed by ideal activities." (Real Encyclopædie, Eleventh Ed., 1866.) In another place, he defines idealism to be "that philosophical view which regards what is thought as alone the actually existent." This is the best definition, and accords perfectly with the teaching of the true idealists of all ages and countries. "Thought," says the Kabala, "is the source of all that is." It is the first Sephira or emanation from God. It is the first begotten, the first-born from the "Unknown." It is the I Am, the highest manifestation of God in man, and the most real thing in the universe, that from which everything springs, and to which in its last analysis it can be reduced. But it is necessary to inquire into the nature of ideas, and their relation to external things, and all the objects of the sense-world. Says Thomas Taylor, in the introduction to the Parmenides of Plato: "To the question, what kind of things, or beings, ideas are, we may answer with Zenocrates, according to the relation of Proclus, that they are the exemplary causes of things which perpetually subsist according to nature. They are exemplars (or the living patterns or models of things) indeed, because the final cause, or the good (the supreme God), is superior to them, and that which is properly the efficient cause, or the demiurgic intellect, is of an inferior ordination. But they are the exemplars of things according to nature, because there are no ideas of things unnatural or artificial; and of such natural things as are perpetual, because there are no ideas of mutable particulars." (Taylor's Translation of Plato, p. 254.) This is a comprehensive statement of the nature of the Platonic ideas. According to this view, the ideal is the causal, as the ideal picture in the mind of the artist is the necessary cause of the picture on the canvas. The latter, though only a resemblance, could not exist without the former, because there can be no resemblance that is not the resemblance of something; no appearance that is not the appearance of something. The architect constructs his house in imitation of a preëxisting model or idea, and, without that idea, it might be anything else, as well as a house. So the tabernacle of Moses was to be built after the pattern shown to him in the Mount. So of every object of nature, and of all that endless variety of things, which belongs to the world of sense, they owe their existence to antecedent ideas, which they represent on a lower plane of being. As ideas are the causes of the existence of all material entities, so they sustain a causal relation to the human body, and all its states of health and disease. If I would be perfectly well in body, I must first form the true idea of myself, such as I really am in spirit (or as Paul would say, in Christ). For Plato teaches that the highest soul of man, the pneuma of the New Testament, the Buddhi of the Sanscrit, is the idea or living image of God. If I come to the knowledge of this, my real and immortal self, - it will act as a cause, and adjust the lower animal soul, and the body in harmony with it. And "our earthly house of this tabernacle" will be constructed after the pattern shown to us in the Mount. All creation is first in idea, and is essentially a generating or begetting. Ideas are conceptions; that is, they are the union of pure intellect, which was viewed in the Hermetic philosophy as masculine, with that spiritual and feminine principle, which may be designated by the general term, feeling. This union is life whenever and wherever it is effected. It is represented symbolically by the cross, and is the Kabalistic balance, and they express one of the most comprehensive and far-reaching truths in the whole realm of thought. "There is in everything," says Swedenborg, "the marriage of truth and good," or the conjunction of intellect and feeling. This extends through the universe. It is said in the Sohar, the Book of Splendor, or the teaching of the |