Aphorisms & Precepts



Thus man is what he wills. As his love is, so is his life. When man thinks about the neighbour, he wills one of two things he wills good to his neighbour or the opposite.

Psora is the evolution of the state of man’s will, the ultimate of his sin.

This outgrowth, which has come upon man from living a life of evil willing, is Psora is the life of Psora.

Now in proportion as a man falsifies truth or mixes or perverts truth; in proportion as he mixes willing well with willing evil, so does he adulterate his interiors until that state is present.

When Psora had become a complete ultimation, of causes, it became contagious.

Everything that is a thing, has its aura or atmosphere. So as a race or class, the entire human race has its atmosphere or aura also. Each individual has his aura, or atmosphere.

This aura becomes intensified with the growth of evil in the interior of man.

Thinking, willing, and doing, are the three things in life from which finally proceed the chronic miasms.

The whole Miasm in a chronic disease, does not come out in an individual, but in the human race.

The human race exists as a changed Esse.

The Homoeopathic principles, when known, are plain, simple and easily comprehended. They are in harmony with all things known to be true.

It is not a matter of theory, or belief, or opinion; we must have something more substantial. Homoeopathy must rest upon facts.

When a microscopist can examine a grain of wheat, and tell whether it will grow if planted in favorable soil, he may be of use to Homoeopathy. When he can examine a smallpox crust and tell whether it is still contagious, or whether its power has been destroyed by heat, then he may be of use. When he can examine the Aconite root and tell how it will affect man, we can do away with provings, but we have to enter by a different door.

One cannot afford to be liberal with principle.

When you make failures you may be sure that they are within yourself. If you think the failure is in Homoeopathy you will begin your corrections on the wrong side of the ledger.

All quick prescribing depends upon the ability to grasp comparatively the symptoms.

If you do not know sickness you are apt to think all things strange and unique.

Sharp prescribing is attended with immediate results. If you do sharp work you will see frequent aggravations of the remedy. When you do poor work you never see them.

True pathology is entirely unknown to the medical profession outside of Homoeopathy. It is morbid anatomy alone that is known.

if you love Homoeopathy it will love you; such is natural charity.

One who is vicious in his real life, may preserve a Placid exterior for a time, but will be shunned by good People are long.

We owe no obedience to man, not even to our parents after we are old enough to think for ourselves. We owe obedience only to Truth.

When old symptoms return, there is hope. That is the road to cure and there is none other.

The physician spoils his case when he prescribes for the local symptoms and neglects the patient.

It is an entirely different business to comfort from what it is to cure.

What is man? Is he a body? If so we are justified in thinking of his parts, his liver, and lungs, and skin, and extremities, and his body as a whole. But we are to consider man as from the life to the body.

Man is made up of what he is. The very is, or being, or Esse of man is his will. The difference between two human brings would scarcely be more than the will.

The will is expressed in the face; hence the difference of countenance of people. Has the murderer and evil-doer a placid face.

What a man wills to do is his life and character.

Proceeding from the will is man’s understanding. If the will is good to obey the commandments, he selects his very education in accordance with it.

Memory is the gateway to man. The outermost envelope of this Esse is formed to be a receptacle for the will, the understanding, and the memory.

The upright man whose desires are good, wants the truth. His perceptions are intensified.

A prejudiced mind, decides without wisdom the way he wants to have it.

Every man has his affections, his pet theory to sub due.

These things enter into the symptomatology know the human heart. Hence know the human heart.

Man, to day, is destroyed as to his interiors so that truth looks as black as smoke, and false philosophy as bright as the sun.

The outer world is the world of results. The inner world not discoverable by the senses, but by the understanding.

When we conceive that innumerable causes may give rise to the same pathological conditions we see that the pathological condition in itself, cannot furnish us with the slightest idea of the remedy.

Under Homoeopathic treatment progress of chronic disease the highest degree of susceptibility must be present. until a cure sometimes becomes possible.

When you look at morbid anatomy from the symptomatology you are looking at it from the interior. Morbid anatomy must not be studied as a basis for prescription making.

Irregular action expressed in signs and symptoms is the disease. The disturbance in the Vital Substance has no other means by which it can make itself known to the intelligent physician. This is in accordance with law. This leaves morbid anatomy out of the question.

You need not expect great things when you have only pathological symptoms.

When Pathological changes have gone or extensively the symptoms withdraw, seemingly discouraged that there is no physician. So soon as a patient falls into the hands of a real physician the symptoms become orderly.

Unit of action in health, unit of action in sickness, unit of action in cure, all are one.

The Old School materia medica is known only to the Homoeopath. To the Allopath it is really unknown.

It would seem as if the Old School would have asked long ago “What are the effects of drugs upon healthy people?” Their experiments on animals do not answer this.

“This remedy has proved useful in such and such conditions.” they say. Homoeopaths know that such medicine has produced such and such effects on provers.

Man is more susceptible to drugs than to a disease, because their action may be forced upon the economy. In disease the highest degree of susceptibility must be present.

One who is not acute in observation, goes through life, seeing only indifferent similarity. Most men only know the toxic power of a drug.

Man is susceptible to all things capable of producing similar symptoms to those which he already has.

The record of symptoms derived from cases of poisoning, is the poorest kind of evidence for the Homoeopathic materia medica. They are useful only as collateral evidence.

Individualization is blocked by this inability to distinguish between the finer features of sickness, and of medicines.

With the true physician, discrimination is not with the eye alone; the consciousness of discrimination seems to occupy his entire economy.

No two remedies are absolutely equal in their similitude.

The whole aim of Homoeopathy is to cure.

He who sees not in Bright’s Disease the deep miasm back of it, sees not the whole disease, but only the finishing of a long course of symptoms which have been developing for years.

The law, of sickness, is the law of sickness, whether produced by drug or disease. It is the law of influx.

It is inconsistent and irrational to think that there are several active diseases in the body at the same time.

Take the simplest form of substance known to have life. If we subject it to physical and chemical forces it is killed; it no longer moves, feeds, propagates, or can be killed. There is then, something that can be withdrawn by physical force. Can we not perceive that ’tis a something added to these forces that makes it alive? It is not merely a motion of this substance, for move as you will, it is, dead. Something is withdrawn, which can only come within the perception of the understanding.

These simple substances are the primitive powers of the earth. Gravitation must be something or we could not predicate anything of it.

Only quality can be predicated of the Simple Substance.

What things can we predicate of the Simple Substance? It cannot be found by Chemistry, nor seen with the eye, nor felt with the fingers. It must have a medium of operation, in order that it relay become manifest to the sensorium.

For example, Electricity and the machine. Electricity is a simple substance, and needs the conductor to make it manifest. Until Electricity was discovered through a medium, it was unknown.

Cohesion is a primitive substance, and will obey all the laws that govern primitive substance; so also is the Vital Force. Light also is a simple substance, and will obey all the laws laid down for Vital Force.

This Primitive Substance abides in everything that grows, or has individuality or identity. It is the Vicegerent of the Soul.

If the Primitive Substance is normal, that which it creates is normal. Disease, which flows into the body, comes from within by influx through this Primitive Substance.

All motion, harmony and order, are due to Simple Substance. It not only operates all things, but is the cause of operation of all substances that are material. The very sounds of the forest have harmony and co-operation.

James Tyler Kent
James Tyler Kent (1849–1916) was an American physician. Prior to his involvement with homeopathy, Kent had practiced conventional medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. He discovered and "converted" to homeopathy as a result of his wife's recovery from a serious ailment using homeopathic methods.
In 1881, Kent accepted a position as professor of anatomy at the Homeopathic College of Missouri, an institution with which he remained affiliated until 1888. In 1890, Kent moved to Pennsylvania to take a position as Dean of Professors at the Post-Graduate Homeopathic Medical School of Philadelphia. In 1897 Kent published his magnum opus, Repertory of the Homœopathic Materia Medica. Kent moved to Chicago in 1903, where he taught at Hahnemann Medical College.