Mind and Body; or, Mental States and Physical Conditions - Atkinson William Walker

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and also returns to the locality in which it has previously secured food. Biological experiments have shown that the cells are capable of experiencing surprise, pleasure and fear, and that they experience different degrees of feeling, and react accordingly in response to stimuli. Verworn, a biologist, even goes so far as to assert that they habitually adapt means to ends, near and remote. In his remarkable work on cell-life, “The Psychic Life of Micro-organisms,” Binet says: “We shall not regard it as strange, perhaps, to find so complete a psychology in the history of the lower organisms, when we call to mind that, agreeably to the ideas of evolution now accepted, a higher animal is nothing more than a colony of protozoans. Every one of the cells composing such an animal has retained its primitive properties, giving them a higher degree of perfection by division of labor and by selection. The epithelial cells that secrete the nails and hair are organisms perfected with reference to the secretion of protective parts. Similarly, the cells of the brain are organisms that have been perfected with reference to psychical attributes.”

      Dr. Schofield says: “That life involves mind has, of course, like all else, been vigorously disputed and equally vigorously affirmed. ‘Life,’ says Prof. Bascom, ‘is not force; it is combining power. It is the product and presence of mind.’ … The extent to which the word mind may be employed as the inherent cause of purposive movements in organisms is a very difficult question to solve. There can be no doubt that the actual agents in such movements are the natural forces, but behind these the directing and starting power seems to be psychic… There being an indwelling power, not only for purposive action in each cell, but for endless combinations of cell activities for common ends not at all connected with the mere nutrition of the single cell, but for the good of the completed organism.” Dr. R. Dunn says: “From the first movement when the primordial cell-germ of a human organism comes into being, the entire individual is present, fitted for human destiny. From the same moment, matter, life and mind are never for an instant separated, their union constituting the essential work of our present existence.” Carpenter says: “The convertibility of physical forces and correlation of these with the vital and the intricacy of that nexus between mental and bodily activity which cannot be analyzed, all lead upwards towards one and the same conclusion —the source of all power is mind. And that physical conclusion is the apex of the pyramid which has its foundation in the primitive instincts of humanity.”

      Having seen the evidences of life and mind in the single cell, let us now proceed to a consideration of the intelligence or mind inherent and manifest in the groups of cells, large and small, including the largest groups which compose the several organs of the body. This line of investigation will lead us to a fuller understanding of the influence of the mental states upon the health or disease of the organs and parts. It will be seen that Mental Healing has a sound biological as well as a psychological basis of truth, and that it is not necessary to invade the fields of metaphysics or theology in order to find an explanation of the effect of mind over body.

      CHAPTER IV

      THE MENTAL BASIS OF CURE

      We have seen that in each cell in the human body is embodied a part of the Subconscious Mind, sufficient in quantity and quality to enable the cell to perform its particular work in the physical community of cells. In the same manner each group of cells, large or small, is possessed of the quantity and quality of mind adapted to the successful performance of its particular function. And, rising in the scale, we find that each of the physical organs is possessed of a “composite cell-soul” or “organ-mind.” As Hudson says: “Each organ of the body is composed of a group of cells which are differentiated with special reference to the functions to be performed by that organ. In other words, every function of life is performed by groups of co-operative cells, so that the body as a whole is simply a confederation of the various groups.”

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