Various

“ The healer gently guides him up into the “mount of transfiguration,” where he feels the glow of the divine image within, and sees that wholeness is already his, and will be made manifest as he recognizes it. A successful healer must be an overflowing fountain of love and good-will. He is but a conduit through which flows the divine repletion. He makes ideal conditions present. He steadily holds a mental image of his patient as already whole, and silently appeals to the unconscious mind of the invalid, to induce him to accept the same view. ”

“ In the dust of the evil He has not failed to drop one grain of gold to glisten, and to make glad the dull waste of life. The grain is there, planted by God’s hand, in every soul. It was in their souls, poor, old, sin-covered, forsaken souls, toiling up to the light through those begrimed walls among the filth, and dust, and mould. Not one of them but was God’s work, and bore His grain of gold. None would be lost, not one. What matter if the prison registrar’s table of deaths did record so many, Found dead! ”

“ In literature, religion, politics, economics, ethics, everything turns upon the relations of these contending parties, from the Pope’s Encyclical to the Platform of the People’s Party. When we speak of our age, as the age of iron, silver, gold, or of steam, electricity, intellect!—we simply say it is the age of integrated capital, material and mental. To destroy this capital is impossible, and if possible would be the suicide of civilization. ”

“ Of course, wretched though you may be, you are incomparably better off than the miserables of cruel Russia, because our national government could not possibly be as outrageous as is of necessity that of the Czar. It has taken many centuries to evolve such a monster cuttle-fish as the Russian government that has fastened its tentacles upon its millions of people, and is slowly crushing out their lives. ”

“ I refer to society’s exiles, or the contingent of the social cellar. This element grows more powerful with each year. It is not securing justice at the hands of civilization and must some day be reckoned with.
In every agitation, every crusade against wrong, every battle for humanity, every contest for a broader sweep of justice, conventional critics have arrayed themselves on the side of the evil conditions, and denounced as dangerous agitators those who have sought to arouse the higher impulses of the people to right the crying wrongs of the hour. ”

“ The government that serves and protects the people will not need to compel them. Now its main business is to hold them down while they are being robbed.
But, says Mr. Savage, these advantages would be attended by a frightful “paradise of officialism”—a helpless subordination—in which “the individual if not an officer would only count one!” We cannot appreciate the horror of having more of “a paradise” about officialism than we have in our present corrupt, inconstant, and servile system of political Bossism, even if the individual could only “count one.” ”

“ Government would for the first time in the history of the world, evolve beyond paternalism. It would be industrial cooperative administration, for the equal benefit of all, protection of the liberty of all, and such defence and restraint only as these main objects require. Government would thus be the material foundation upon which liberty, originality, and the original—the uncommonplace—could stand and be protected. The key to liberty is the “separation of the temporal and spiritual powers;” but Nationalism does even more than that. ”

“ And with this fact kept in view, the short-sightedness of royalty in the presence of the rising tide of intelligent discontent is by no means strange. Indifferent to the fate of the masses in any struggle that might be precipitated, guided by none of the higher impulses of life, and possessing implicit confidence in the impregnability of that triple bulwark of conservatism, the army, the police, and the Church, the ruling party of French aristocracy drifted down the stream garlanded with roses, revelling in wine and music, abandoning itself to pleasure on life’s lowest plane. ”

“ It is time for intelligent men to tire of all this burlesque of politics and this solemn joke of calling it “great statesmanship,” that is breeding these ungainly toadies—squat and warty. A country is great only as her political institutions are good and wise—not merely when it is strong in numbers, large in acres, and swarming with politicians and parasites that are worshipped as great and good statesmen. ”

“ Inferior men with greatest cunning and least scruples soon push their way to the front; all sight of good government is eventually lost, the Washingtons and Jeffersons in time disappear with a constantly increasing ratio from public life, and the end is the great Leaderless Mob and bloody chaos. Even at best our politicians and party publications sing in unison, all struggling to the same end, victory at the polls and the elimination, as far as possible, of real issues. ”

“ We understand it all by the sufferings of the wife, with whom we alternately hope and despair. I copy here what I wrote of it at the time when I knew neither Mr. and Mrs. Herne, nor any other of their plays.
The second act in this play for tenderness and truth has not been surpassed in any American play. A daring thing exquisitely done was that holiest of confidences between husband and wife. The vast audience sat hushed as death before that touching, almost sacred scene, as they do when sitting before some great tragedy. ”

“ He in no way deserves the shameful imprisonment he is suffering; yet the prejudice of the majority sustains the infamous law that makes criminals of the innocent and takes not into consideration the rights of the minority. And what is more, the religious press is so dominated by bigotry and ancient prejudice that it is blind alike to the Golden Rule and the inexorable demands of justice. ”

“ The phenomenon of pain, so commonly regarded as an evil, is only a warning voice to summon our consciousness from its resting-place in the damp, morgue-like basement of our being, to the higher apartments, where sunshine and harmony are ever present. It is beneficent when its message is heeded, for it is thereby transformed into blessing. Our resistance to it, and misunderstanding of its significance, prevent that possible transformation. The process of cure through mind, though in itself a steady growth, often appears to the consciousness of the patient as vibratory and uneven. ”

“ Our anarchists invariably submit to the tyranny of our free nationalized Brooklyn Bridge instead of swimming the river, or using the ferry company, as they are at full liberty to do. We had a hard fight to get this bridge, for it displaced monopolies. When the other monopolies, we have referred to, are displaced by the people, there will be the same wonder that their tyrannies and exactions were ever submitted to. We have found, and will find, that that government is the best which serves and administers the most, for it will cost and restrain the least. ”

“ Here were thousands of human beings dwelling in the atmosphere of crime and brutality, hungry, cold, and well-nigh hopelessly vicious by virtue of want, association, and environment, and ready for, if not eagerly anticipating any social upheaval which would afford them an opportunity to plunder and pillage. This world presented then, as it ever must, the saddest and most hopeless spectacle in the kaleidoscope of life. There were scores of thousands in this social sewer and new recruits coming daily. ”

“ I would wish a better education for our children than we have had—one that would cure them of this disease of ignorance in politics, worship of demagogy and admiration of that cheap and nasty politics that is our national disease, and that is making on our body politic abhorrent warts and angry sores. ”

“ To-day if we would demonstrate that a century of civilization and free government has lifted us to a higher ethical level than humanity had attained a hundred years ago, we must face conditions as they are and promptly adopt measures that will secure such a meed of justice for the weak as shall take from his heart the bitterness of injustice and establish a feeling of common brotherhood and good-will. ”

“ The adaptability of drugs to heal disease is becoming a matter of doubt, even among many who have not yet studied deeper causation. Materia medica lacks the exact elements of a science. The just preponderance for good or ill of any drug upon the human system is an unsolved problem, and will so remain. The fact that a fresh remedy seems to work well while it is much talked about, and then gradually appears to lose its efficacy, suggests that it is the atmosphere of general belief in the medicine, and not the medicine itself that accomplishes the visible result. ”

“ Politics must be annexed to our government by such legal provisions, instead of being left to boss monopoly or mobocracy. There is no freedom possible without a common law and order to ensure and protect it. The trouble is now that all of our politics are outside of any law or order. “Count one!” Even that is now impossible. We don’t count at all, no more than if we lived in Russia. But how many does Mr. Savage want an individual to count? ”

“ If the masses of our people were unable to read or write, if they had been accustomed to centuries of oppression, a policy so glaringly unjust and disingenuous might succeed for a time. But with conditions as they are, the persistent crying of peace when there is no peace, and attempting to juggle with facts is more than foolish, it is criminal. One who does not regularly read the labor and agricultural press of this country is incapable of forming an intelligent idea of the nature or extent of the discontent at the present time. ”

“ All honor to the multitude of noble and brave men who from the old standpoint have battled with disease, and who have ever been on the alert to utilize every possible balm, in order to restore disordered humanity. But systems are tenacious of life in proportion as they are hoary with age. They mould men to their own shape; to break with them is difficult: tradition, pride, professional honor, and loyalty, and often social and pecuniary status, are all like strong cords, which bind even great men to their conventional grooves. ”

“ But when the pinch of misgovernment comes in the form of the gaunt wolf then the people rise up, and without a “statesman” to lead, without a newspaper to educate, but with a holy wrath, crush out these official puppets. For at least sixteen years the unbiased intelligence of the Democratic party (not politicians) has been urging party leaders to take the bold stand for free trade. ”

“ The duty of the hour is to turn on the light, to compel the thoughtful among our wealthy and powerful people to know the truth as it is, and to seek such a just and equitable revolution as will save a baptism of blood. ”

“ The mental healer is like one rowing against the current of a mighty river. Humanity is “bound in one bundle,” and it is with difficulty that a few can advance much faster than the rythmical step of the mass. Even the Great Exemplar in some places could not do many mighty works because of surrounding unbelief. ”

“ The power does not lie in the personality of the healer, nor in the exercise of his will-power. Neither hypnotism nor mesmeric control are elements in true mind-healing. The healer, in reality, is but an interpreter and teacher. The divine recuperative forces which exist, but are latent, are awakened and called into action. The patient is like a discordant instrument containing great capabilities, only waiting to respond in unison to active harmony. ”

“ You alone would suffer. For even if you yourself were to tell me that the Mahatmas do not exist, and that you have tricked in every phenomenon produced by you, I would answer you that you lie, for we know the Mahatmas, and know that you cannot—no more than a fly on the moon—have produced certain of the best of your phenomena.” It should be stated here that, in the whole correspondence revealed by Mrs. Coulomb, Colonel Olcott appears as the dupe of Madame Blavatsky, and in no case accessory to imposture unless by an amazing credulity. ”

“ Let us look a little further into the absurdities over which American statesmen are so vehemently wrangling. Our government assumes the old time function of all governments to make and regulate the currency or money for the transaction of business—a mere convenience for the measure of values in buying and selling—in another way a thing performing functions similar to the yard-stick in measuring, and the great statesmen are wrangling over the problem of what particular material that convenience shall be made. ”

“ To deny the reality of the wrongs complained of, or lightly dismiss them as our popular economists are doing, is to pursue the ostrich policy with the certainty of being overtaken by the results of the evil which might have been averted. It matters not whether our “eminent” authorities are ignorant of the true social condition in city and country life to-day, or are wickedly juggling with truth in order to curry favor with plutocracy and conservatism, the fact remains that they are deceiving their masters as courtiers have often deceived thrones at moments when deception meant ruin. ”

“ It has given courage to many who (being in the minority) had given up the idea of ever having a play after their ideal. It has cleared the air and showed the way out of the cul de sac into which monopoly seemed to have driven plays and players. It demonstrated that a small theatre makes the production of literary plays possible, and the whole field is opening to the American dramatist. The fact that the lovers of truth and art are in the minority, no longer cuts a figure. The small theatre makes a theatre for the minority not only possible, but inevitable. ”

“ The organization of a powerful party machinery with the authority to discipline recalcitrant or discordant members is a natural outgrowth of our universal voting. The active politicians and place hunters will control the machine, and when office, and place are made glittering prizes, then comes the inevitable scramble, the selfishness, trampling the weak by the strong, corruption, chicanery, the unspeakable crimes, and finally the Pandora’s box is opened, and the swarming evils darken the heavens. ”

“ Unfortunately the average voter studies the science of politics—good government,—only when thumb-screwed by bad legislation. When happy and revelling in plenty, this cunning thrift of politicians is good enough “statesmanship” for pretty much all of us; then we can really admire the brightness of the great “Magnetic” when he says, “Boys, I am a model high tarriffite, and in favor of reciprocity;” even the vitriolic ravings of the iridescent—sparkling phrases without ideas, torchlight jeremaids about the poor Southern negro, are all brilliant statesmanship ”

“ Who will assert that God is changeable, so that any divinely bestowed boon to one age could be withdrawn from a subsequent one? The direct assurance of the Christ, that “these signs shall follow them that believe,” is perpetual in its scope, because “them that believe” are limited to no age, race, or condition. As ecclesiasticism and materialism crept into the early church, and personal ambitions and worldly policies sapped its vitality, spiritual transparency and brotherly love faded out, and with them went the power—or rather the recognition of the power—to heal. ”