“Such,” he says, “has hitherto been the splendid juggling of so- called theoretical medicine, in which *a priori conceptions and speculative subtleties only showed things which could not be known, and which were of no use for the cure of disease.
“In the pure sciences of experience” he continues, “in physics, chemistry and medicine merely speculative reason can consequently have no voice; there, when it acts alone, it degenerates into empty speculation and phantasy and produces only hazardous hypotheses which are, and by their very nature must be, self- deceptive and false.”
Ameke, the historian of homoeopathy, has made and illuminating comment on the last quoted paragraph. He says: “The great difference between Hahnemann and the later natural historical school is expressed by himself in one small word of three letters;*’and’ Hahnemann speaks of physics, chemistry *and medicine; they said; medicine is applied physics and chemistry, and founded medicine on these two sciences”. Hahnemann founded medicine not on physics and chemistry, but on *the universal laws of Life and Motion.
Hahnemann starts, then, with the conception of Life as a real or substantial entitative power or principle, having laws of its own, and refers all the phenomena of health and disease to it under two names: “The Dynamis” and “The Life Force” *This is Hahnemann’s greatest discovery, and the absolute bed-rock of his system.
The words “force” and “life force” were used inaccurately in this connection, however, making it difficult for some to form a clear conception of what life is in its philosophical relation to homoeopathy. The failure to make a distinction between *power and *force has always caused confusion. The word “force” generally, as well as in the Organon, is loosely used to express the idea of any operating or operative power or energy; of any active agency or power tending to change the state of matter; and this is the sense in which Hahnemann often uses the word in the Organon when he speaks of the “life force” as that which acts and is acted upon in disease and cure.
Now, as a matter of fact, we do not act upon force nor upon motion. These terms express abstract ideas or concepts which stand to the concrete things or reality back of them in the relation of effects to causes.
Force and motion are merely phenomena of the power which produces them. Power is the property of any thing or substance by virtue of which it is able to produce changes in itself, or in any other thing or substance.
Motion is the result of the application of force. Force is the product of power or energy. the power inherent in a body is quite another thing from the force exerted by it or upon it.
Action (motion) takes place only in or in connection with that which has the power to react or resist, the thing itself, where it be a stone, a machine or a living organism. The thing itself is always substantial, having a real objective existence, even if it be intangible or invisible. Strictly speaking, we do not act upon the life force, but upon life itself, the real, substantial, objective, although intangible, substance from which the living organism is evolved, of which it is composed and from which the life force proceeds.
The organism does not evolve out of nothing “Out of nothing, nothing comes”. The living organism is a development an evolution from a microscopic cell, which is itself an organism composed of living matter and a nucleus, developed from invisible, living substance which attracts to itself, assimilates and transforms tangible elements from the material world.
Everything living comes from preceding life in an unbroken chain, the last conceivable link of which is in the one Infinite and Eternal Source of Life, the Supreme Being. Metaphysical science recognizes this conception under the term of “the Cosmic Life”.
In thinking upon this subject it is necessary, in order to avoid confusion, to keep clearly in mind the distinction between the Thing Itself and its action. There can be no action without something to act; no phenomena without the being of which the phenomena are an expression; no force without the power which exerts the force; no thought without a thinker. The words, action, phenomena, force, thought, stand for abstract ideas, separated from the real, substantial things or causes which lie back of them, for purposes of thought.
We do not see motion; we see a body change its position in space as when one picks up a book from one side of the desk and places it on the other side. we do not see force; we see the effects of the force upon a body in changing its position in space. We do not see life; we see only its manifestation in organism. But knowing intuitively and by experience that there can be no effect without a cause, no motion without force, and no force without something or somebody to exercise power, we assume the existence of that power, person or thing as a primitive fact and name it, although we cannot see the power, person or thing with the physical eye, even with the aid of an ultra microscope. We see the primary substance, power, person or thing with the mental eye and are satisfied.
To refuse to see and acknowledge the substance, principle, power or person behind the force and to confine thinking within the limits of matter, phenomena and force is to kill the highest aspirations of the soul, stultify the intellect and land the thinker in the morass of materialism. A certain class of thinkers, especially in physical science, plume themselves upon their rigid limitation of thought within the bounds of physical phenomena. They deny not only the validity of any attempt to see what lies beyond phenomena, but the reality and substantial existence of anything lying beyond that arbitrary boundary. Metaphysics is their pet aversion. Such men invariably entangle themselves in a maze of contradictions and absurdities and mislead their followers. They juggle with words, invert the terms of logical propositions, formulate “circular syllogisms” and make causes follow effects.
Metaphysical thought and inquiry are quite as legitimate and valid, and quite as capable of being conducted logically and scientifically, as physical research. There is a valid and scientific meta-physics as well as physics.
George Henry Lewes says. “It is experience our own or that of others on which we rest. We are not at liberty to invent experience, nor to infer anything contrary to it, only to extend it analogically. Speculation to be valid must be simply the extension of experience by the analogies of experiences. It is possible to move securely in the ground of speculation so long as we carefully pick our way, and consider each position insecure till what was merely probable becomes prove.”
Hahnemann at first apparently had the distinction between power and force pretty clearly in mind in his use, in the Organon, of the two terms; “Dynamis” the life power, the substance, the thing itself, objectively considered; and “Life -Force”, the action of the power; but he failed to maintain the distinction, uniformly in his subsequent use of the words. All doubts as to Hahnemann’s ultimate position is removed and the subject is placed beyond controversy, so far as he is concerned, however, by the final sixth revised edition of the Organon which is at last accessible to the profession. In this edition Hahnemann invariably use the term, *Vital Principle instead of Vital Force, even speaking in one place of *the vital force of the Vital Principle”, thus making it clear that he held firmly to the substantialistic view of life-that is, that Life is a substantial, objective entity; a primary, originating power or principle, and not a mere condition, or “mode of motion”.
From this conception arises the dynamical theory of disease upon which is based the Hahnemannian pathology, viz:- *that disease is always primarily a dynamical (or functional) disturbance of the vital principle. Upon this is reared the entire edifice of therapeutic medication, governed by the law of similia as a selective principle.
Life then is not primarily a phenomenon. It is cause of phenomena. Life is not, strictly speaking, a force; it is a substance, a power or principle which acts to exert or cause force Life is a substantial, self-existent, self-acting entity, not a mere abstraction. Life is not a product; it is the producer, whether it be of matter or motion. In brief, Life is intelligent, incorporeal vital substance the original “simple substance” of the ancients.
Life in a dynamical sense, is *energy the universal principle and cause of vital action and reaction, organization, growth, self-preservation and reproduction, inherent in all living things.
Life therefore, is included under the general principle of science, which declares that “all force is persistent and indestructible”. *and this is the scientific statement of the doctrine of immortality.
Energy must exist before work can be done. Hence, life and mind logically and necessarily precede organization, and thus must be not only the cause but the controlling power of organization. Life built the body and life preserves it, as long as it is needed for the purpose of “our indwelling rational spirit,” as Hahnemann calls it.
Dr. Close was born November 24, 1860 and came to study homeopathy after the death of his father in 1879. His mother remarried a homoeopathic physician who turned Close's interests from law to medicine.
His stepfather helped him study the Organon and he attended medical school in California for two years. Finishing his studies at New York Homeopathic College he graduated in 1885. Completing his homeopathic education. Close preceptored with B. Fincke and P. P. Wells.
Setting up practice in Brooklyn, Dr. Close went on to found the Brooklyn Homoeopathic Union in 1897. This group devoted itself to the study of pure Hahnemannian homeopathy.
In 1905 Dr. Close was elected president of the International Hahnemannian Association. He was also the editor of the Department of Homeopathic Philosophy for the Homeopathic Recorder. Dr. Close taught homeopathic philosophy at New York Homeopathic Medical College from 1909-1913.
Dr. Close's lectures at New York Homeopathic were first published in the Homeopathic Recorder and later formed the basis for his masterpiece on homeopathic philosophy, The Genius of Homeopathy.
Dr. Close passed away on June 26, 1929 after a full and productive career in homeopathy.