I.
“You homoeopaths need someone to wake you up and tell you what ails you”.
“You hold on too long to your old books, old ideas, old words and phrases and old forms of thought”.
“Nomenclature is perhaps the greatest handicap of science, and we are constantly forced to change nomenclature to meet newly proven and accepted facts”.
“The American Institute of Homoeopathy ought to appoint a committee on nomenclature to modernize and reduce to understandable terms the old things which are now antiquated, intangible and reduce them to terms of the physical”.
“The formula, like cures like, it is a theoretic thought which, as such, appeals to the scientists as pure bunk-fake We must forget this as a mere expression of dogma, which repels and antagonizes, and convert it into the new, scientifically established and accepted, principle of the elective affinity of drugs”.
“Get that spirit-force idea out of your heads. That was all right before we could measure things! Now we can detect and measure the individual molecule-nay, we go further and measure the individual atom, and even its component factors.” (Sentences from the speech of Charles H. Kettering, before the International Hahnemannian Medical Association, 1922.).
II.
Mr. Kettering has provided me with an Embarras de Richesse for the selection of a “taking title” for this months article for THE RECORDER. There are at least ten good titles and as many subjects contained in the sentences which I have quoted from his thought-provocative speech. I considered them all and pondered much before choosing; but his “Mystery and the Intangible” intrigued me until all the others were relegated to the “page below,” without derogation of their individual merits. I may use some of the other later.
Most of us live a mystery and its solution,whether it be in a detective story, the tale of a search for buried treasure or research on a pathological problem. Science owes much if not the greater part of its progress, to the love of mystery ingrained in human nature, I suspect that even Mr. Kettering love a mystery and that he only compelled himself under the influence of a “stern New England conscience” (I havent a “Whos Who” with me in the Catskills where I am writing this and dont know whether he is of New England ancestry or not) to admonish us to put away the seductive thing. At any rate, he is a man of accomplishment, and it is perfectly evident that in his department he has done his share in solving mysteries, which he would not have done if he had not loved them.
By the same taken I suspect that Mr. Kettering loves “The Intangible,”else why should he have exhorted us in good old New England style to put away the evil thing? “Conscience makes cowards of us all.” We flee from the Thing that is too great for us and afterwards tell a thrilling tale of the valorous battle we fought with it, taking from defeat the glory due only to victory.
III.
The universe is full of mystery and the further physical science penetrates into the unknown the deeper and more insoluble it grows. And as for The Intangible: what is the ultimate object and highest aim of science, philosophy and religion but to reduce everything, theoretically, to the “intangible,” and then from that sure foundation to build up the material and the concrete? Energy, power, force, motion, vibration,the ether, in all their forms and modes of manifestation- are not these, or THIS, intangible?.
Mr. Kettering knows this, even if he chooses at times to forget it. He deals with electricity which, next to the hypothetical either, is the supreme and never failing example of intangibility in physical science.
The mining engineer, assisted by the chemist and metallurgist, directs the digging of the mineral from the rock and superintends its treatment through the process of crushing, grinding, pulverizing, floatation and smelting, all leading to an approximate degree of solubility( and to intangibility if carried far enough) in order to extract the pure gold or copper, as the case may be.
The chemist will discourse learnedly and convincingly of solubility and “Infinite Solution,” which is the only, if unattainable, ideally perfect solution, and absolutely intangible.
The homoeopathic pharmacist, by trituration, solution and dilution according to scale, following substantially the rules laid down by Hahnemann, the master chemist and physicist and greatest investigator and inventor of his day, prepares for the therapeutist those marvelous “potencies” and much ridiculed “infinitesimals,” which come nearest to being perfect curative agents medically, under certain conditions, because they are the least material, have the highest rate of vibration, most nearly approach the ideal “infinite solution” of the chemist, and are nearest the state of Life, the absolutely intangible and immaterial, which is Absolute Energy.
IV.
Intangibility is not unreality. It is invisibility, immateriality, incorporeality, impalpability, but not unsubstantially. The only real, lasting, substantial, dependable things in the universe are all intangible-the things of which we predicate Energy-Mind, Life, Spirit, Intelligence, on the highest plane of thought and existence as well as the great so-called “forces of nature,” all of which may be measures by their activities.
Mystery lies in the tangible, not in the intangible. Only as we leave the material and ascend to the realm of immaterial,the ideal and the spiritual, are we able to explain or even perceive the mysteries which surround us. There are there only may all uncertainty and doubt be dispelled. There may we stand as humble recipients from the Infinite Intelligence of so much of the truth as we are prepared and willing to know.
V.
Some of the present-day “scientific men,” especially those who belong to that class which arrogates to itself the right to say what is or what is not “scientific,” would have us believe that there are no mysteries in their science. There exist a few unsolved problems, yes; but these only wait a little period of leisure, when they can devote their undivided attention to them to be removed from the category of the unknown. Then it will all be plain sailing,they assure us. They”point with pride” to the many accomplishments of “modern science”; the dynamo, electric motor, telephone, X-ray, radio, etc.; and complacently ignore the reminder that not much besides the mere mechanics is yet really known of even these things which for them are apparently so simple.
“Wait a little,.”they say in substance: “you will soon see. We know how to measure, weigh, analyze, decompose, combine and recombine all the elements of the material world. We can even measure and resolve the atom into its component electrons,and compute the density and stress of the ether. There is nothing but is only a secretion of the brain. We know energy in all it forms-light, heat, electricity, magnetism, etc. and we know most of its laws. Physical science will soon reduce all things to the terms of the physical and solve all problems. For us there are no mysteries in science- only unsolved problems”.
VI.
We listen to these enthusiastic, competent, critical, conceited, aggressive young men (they may be thirty-five or forty,or even fifty-they all look young nowadays) and are momentarily conscious of a quickened pulse.
It means so much-the possibility of settling some of these weighty matters that have baffled and intrigued us so long. But then, remembering some things they have forgotten, or never knew, we wonder if these young men who are so cock-sure about everything, know the history of science and the lives and conclusions of the greatest scientific minds the world has ever known, and have read their latest messages to their fellows as they neared the close of their long lives of study and research and practical accomplishment?
We wonder if physical science in its present-day materialism, hold the solution of ail the great and increasingly complex problems which confront our age? Do our enthusiastic young scientists and laboratory men really know as much as they think they do? Are they “kidding” us-or themselves? Shall we indeed find the truth in matter and materiality, and solve the problems of the universe by physical menstruation?.
Recall what that giant of physical research, Lord Kelvin said: “One word characterizes the most strenuous efforts for the advancement of science that I have made perseveringly during fifty five years-that word is failure. I know no more of electric and magnetic force, of the relation between ether, electricity, and ponderable matter, or of chemical affinity than I knew and tried to teach my students of natural philosophy in my first session as a professor”.
Prof. S. P. Langley wrote: “The more we know the more we recognize our ignorance and the more we have a sense of the mystery of the universe and the limitations of our knowledge”.
Prof.-Stanley Jevons said: “It might be readily shown that in whatever direction we extend our investigations and successfully harmonize a few facts, the result is only to raise up a host of other unexplained facts”.
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.