STRENGTH What is strength? This question sounds as though it might be easily answered, but on consideration it is not so easy. Words are so misused that it is impossible to get at the original meaning, feeling or state when the word was introduced. If you choose to apply the word strength to machinery, then I have no fault to find with the definition, but if it is applied to man also the definition is wrong; for mans strength is in his will, and that is independent of the thing you call strong. If you say, that is a strong lever, then it does not include the force that is applied to it. If the person who first used the word applied it to his wisdom as a powerful intellect, then it will only apply where there is intellect, the quality of which is taken into account. This confusion of meaning makes a great deal of trouble, for we put intelligence into everything that has resistance instead of in the intelligence having the strength. A mans legs are a combined lever, and if you mean that they have strength you might as well say that a lever has strength, for one is as much alive as the other and neither of itself can do anything. The word strength does not convey the authors feelings when he made the expression. He either meant to apply it to wisdom or to matter. If the author meant to give a name to the phenomenon called will, then it makes a vast difference in reasoning about strength. For instance, a person is weak in the back or limbs. Now the medical faculty prescribe strengthening linaments, as though there were intelligence in the medicine and it imparted strength to the weak part. This absurd idea is carried out through all our lives, and it deprives man of the true wisdom that might make him happy and intelligent. My theory disproves the assertion, for I have seen that the p. 316 word strength is a mere word with no more meaning than to lead man astray. The corner stone of the medical science is based on this word strength. This or that thing is said to give a person strength. In the case of a fever the whole invention of the medical faculty is brought to play to discover some medicine that will give strength. The chemist is employed to discover the chemical properties which such and such things contain, and numberless articles are said to contain strengthening virtue. The food is strengthening, the air is strengthening and you can find no end to the strengthening things given to the sick, and all the while they are growing weaker. Every one knows that a horse is stronger than a man, it cannot be the food, for a man fed on grass would die according to our belief, while the animal will live, and so he will live on the same food as man and still grow no stronger. Man puts the construction on the word to suit himself. If the power applied to mans will is called strength; the thing that will is applied to is not called strong. You may ask what this has to do with the curing of disease. I will tell you, for it is the very thing to correct. There is such a term as resistance and this is opposed to strength. For instance, you wish to raise a stone, the wish that wants to raise a stone is one thing, and the stone is another. If wisdom chooses to apply its strength through the arms its motive or will is applied according to the idea of resistance. If a horse is attached to a dead weight it applies its will or strength and if it fails it makes another effort to overcome the resistance. Strength is intelligence; it embraces all mans wisdom, and if his wisdom is of God or Science his strength is not in himself, and to be wise is to be strong. I will illustrate my idea of strength as I apply it to the sick. When I use the word I couple it with skill. These two are governed either by natural wisdom or scientific wisdom. I will state a case of my own experience. I treated a man who had lost the use of his lower limbs, he could not move them when he was sitting in his chair. The doctor called it spinal affection. When he attempted to rise he had not strength enough in his spine to keep his body erect, he would give out at the pit of the stomach, and this took all the power from his legs. This was the doctors theory and the man believed it and applied his will or strength according p. 317 to his wisdom. His hope was cut off. He believed the spine was diseased and so did all his friends and physicians. According to my theory his body was like the weight to be moved, his will or strength was applied to his body just as it would be to a lever which you believed would break if you applied too much power to it; his reason directed the power, and being deceived he could do nothing. To cure him, or make his legs strong and his spine well, was to first convince him that there never was any strength in the idea body, that strength came from some other source. Every one knows that, the will being put into action, an effect is produced called strength. For instance, a person by the power of his will can hold another. What is the grasp? Strength, or is it the will applied to the hand? No one supposes that the hand would catch hold and grasp unless directed by another power. This power is the will governed by the wisdom and the effect is called strength. Strength is the name of the act, so will without an act or motive is no will or strength and availeth nothing. So to sit till his legs grew strong would be as absurd as to make a steam engine and after it was ready to work sit and wait till the wood made its own fire, its steam, and let its steam on to the piston head. For a man that has lost his strength to sit still and wait for it to come is just as absurd as to prepare a clay bin and then wait for it to make a vessel. Such an idea of strength is so absurd that it takes away a mans reasoning faculties. Let man know that this darkness is the want of right direction to his ambition, then his strength is in putting his will into action, both are the result of his wisdom. Destroy a mans prospects and happiness, and you destroy his strength. So as you rouse his ambition and will, his strength comes. The course taken by the medical faculty in their mode of reasoning destroys mans natural powers and makes him a mere tool in the hands of a quack. Every man who reasons that strength can be made by food, air, or rubbing, or any linament, is a fool, although he may be honest. I have tried the experiment and know. I do not guess at it when I say that there is not one particle of virtue in any sort of medicine that people take to give them strength. Neither is there any kind of strength in one kind of food more than another, but it may be all summed up in this, the p. 318 gratification of mans desires embraces all there is of him, and these vary according to circumstances. All men have a desire for happiness, and this desire creates an appetite, and the desire wants to be gratified. This brings up this feeling [activity] called will, and then it is forced on by wisdom to accomplish a desire. The wants of the animal are limited, therefore it is lively and happy, for it acts according to its will. It is often said that the beasts are sick. Granted, but man takes their freedom from them as well as from the human species. Let both be wild and you see a bold race. Look at the uncultivated savage and you will not see him creeping around as though he had done some mean, dirty act, like the civilized man. Of all mean looking things a human being completely under the medical faculty is the lowest, he is as much a slave as the negro at the South, and in fact more so. Look at a sick woman suffering from some opinion that the doctors have made her believe, see the mind completely under the doctor, she is not allowed to eat or drink or even walk or think except as the family physician gives direction. The sick have given their souls to the priests and their bodies to the physicians. They then tell about the good doctor, how much he has done for them, showing that he has deprived them of all noble manly feelings, left them sick, feeble in mind and body, while the doctor struts around like a slave-driver, and the sick curl under the lash of their tongue, as the negroes under the lash of their masters. This may seem strange, but it is Gods truth, that the sick are a mere tool in the hands of the medical faculty, to be treated just as they please. It never will be any better till the sick rise in their wisdom and declare their independence. You may say I am making war for my own gain, but I think I can convince any one who is out from under these slave drivers, that I could make ten dollars where I now make one. My object is to raise my fellow man to his original state. I am a white abolitionist. The blacks it is true are slaves, but their slavery is a blessing compared with that of the sick. I have seen many a white slave that would change places with the black. The only difference is that white slavery is sanctioned by public opinion. But make the slave know that he is one, and you will see a difference in the result. It is hard for me to keep myself in bounds when I think of the groans p. 319 of the sick, knowing that it is all the effect of a superstitious ignorance. Does not the South quote the Bible to prove that slavery is of Divine origin? Do not the priests and doctors quote the old heathen superstition to bolster up a weak and feeble edifice just ready to crumble and crush the leaders? Is not Science raising her voice and crying aloud to the people saying how long shall it be till the old heathen idolatry shall come to an end and man shall learn wisdom and be his own master and not a slave? 1
Posted on: Fri, 04 Jul 2014 17:20:39 +0000