Inasmuch as one cannot find much of immediate help in this field of inquiry in histories of philosophy, a significant part of the present task is to provide background information. The whole study may be considered as a presentation of background information to serve as a foundation for any later investigations, so that they can take for granted what is given here.

While this study is all foundation, some of its material may be considered footings beneath the cellar walls. Such material is included largely in appendices, where it does not interfere with the presentation of the basic outline of philosophical history.

2. Definition

New Thought, already characterized in a preliminary way and to be dealt with at considerable length below, is used without intent wholly to exclude Dresser's thought from it, but as a matter of convenience is used, in connection with references to Dresser's thought, as a body of thought contrasted with Dresser's thought; it will be seen that his may be considered a minority (non-pantheistic) view within New Thought.

3. Limitations

With regard to New Thought and Dresser's thought, this study is not an exhaustive examination of either, but is a consideration of each in relation to the other, to the extent necessary to understand their common ground and differences.

With regard to Dresser, this limitation means that the study is centered on his early thought, of the closing years of the nineteenth century and the opening years of the twentieth century. However, to avoid an arbitrary cutting short of the bibliography and the summary of his life, these sections include years beyond the scope of this study. In these sections one sees something of Dresser's Swedenborgian and psychological interests.

The question of the genuineness of phenomena of healing and extrasensory perception is not examined. It simply is recognized here that claims of such happenings have been made and views developed on the basis of belief in the genuineness of such phenomena.

4. Previous Research in the Field

Research for this study has failed to disclose more than occasional brief references to the philosophy of Dresser. While New Thought has received some attention, it generally has been in connection with other varieties of thought. Reference to the bibliography should be of help to anyone seeking such material.

Here it seems worth mentioning Dresser's New Thought history. This pioneering treatment of the topic will remain indispensable, especially for indicating Dresser's reaction to the matters with which he deals.

A forthcoming [1963] New Thought history by Charles S. Braden should be of immense value. Some parts of it that he has been so kind as to lend in an exchange of information are of great interest from the standpoint of the history of New Thought organizations. The extent to which the book will deal with philosophy is not apparent from the parts read.

5. The Methodology of the Study

The procedure followed in preparing this study has been to rely primarily on writings of Dresser and the others treated here. In addition, this has been supplemented by personal interviews and letter writing.

The work is divided into parts that present (1, Chapter II) an introduction to American thought lying in the background of New Thought, (2, Chapter II) the immediate foundation of New Thought and (3, Chapter IV) Dresser's life, thought, and relationship to New Thought. The second and third of these may be summarized in terms of the following steps:

1. Religious healing that served at least as something of a continuing inspiration and reason for exploring possibilities of healing.

2. Mesmerism, which included phenomena of healing and extrasensory perception, and commonly was believed to be attributable to the flow of an invisible fluid from mesmerist to his subject. This was a materialistic explanation. John Bovee Dods is set forth as a man who followed this general line of thought, but at the same time emphasized the importance of mind and of consciously dealing with disease by mental methods.

3. The reaction against the fluidic explanation by Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, who maintained that "mind acts on mind" and that in his healing without use of mesmerism "the explanation is the cure."

4. The recognition by Warren Felt Evans of the importance of the Quimby views and of the ability of others to apply the Quimby method of healing. Evans proceeded to interpret the healing phenomena in terms of his own Swedenborgian beliefs. Gradually he grew away from Swedenborgianism, and adopted a pantheistic philosophy that came to be known as New Thought.

5. The carrying on of the Quimby views by the parents of Horatio Willis Dresser, and the differing views of Dresser and New Thought. Dresser began with pantheism, but became increasingly dualistic. By contrast, New Thought is seen to have been influenced little or none by Dresser's later views, and remains pantheistic.

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CHAPTER II

THE INTELLECTUAL SETTING OF NEW THOUGHT IN AMERICA

1. Heritage of Early American Philosophy

Early New England thinking has been called "a twig on the Protestant branch of the Augustinian branch of the Mediaeval tree of knowledge." In early colonial days this twig was almost the whole tree of American intellectual life.

The religious character of this thought is apparent, to the point of its often being neglected as a part of philosophy. Yet Jonathan Edwards has been judged "America's first real philosopher."

While God was emphasized in Puritan thought, Nature was not ignored. It was believed that the study of Nature helps to reveal the truth about God, and that "whatever is helpful and brings results must have been intended by God." Puritanism contained

not only the roots of Emerson's "pantheism" but also that basic practicality that contains the seeds of American pragmatism in its most general form."

After the Puritan period came the period of the Enlightenment, when, incidentally, New England lost its early near monopoly in the field of philosophy.

The period of the Enlightenment coincided with that of the achievement of national independence. "There was no period in our history when the public interests of the people were so intimately linked to philosophic issues." The philosophy of that time can be read in public documents.

Deistic, optimistic, this-worldly thinkers of the Enlightenment found much room for natural philosophy. In this a man of particular interest from the standpoint of this study is Benjamin Rush (1745-1813). This Philadelphia physician, medical teacher, and signer of the Declaration of Independence has been called "the father of American psychiatry."

While his therapeutic approach called for treating mind by way of matter, contrary to the methods of those to whom this study is devoted, Rush's outlook is not entirely inconsistent with the views of those to be considered here.

Rush's philosophical importance lies chiefly in the fact that he made an impressive scientific attempt to demonstrate the usnderlying unity of man's "excitability" and consequently of man's knowledge; he suggested, though he did not preach, that there was no radical separation possible between body and soul, medicine and morals, natural and social philosophy.

"As a metaphysician he is at times weak, but as a physician he shows himself cognizant of such difficult discoveries as the cure of mental disorders by suggestion." This is not to suggest that he influenced those dealt with here.

2. Nineteenth Century Utopianism

One of the most interesting outbursts of the romantic, youthful United States was a rash of perfectionist thought. All sorts of reforms were advocated.

The abolitionists were clamoring for the end of slavery; temperance societies demanded the prohibition of alcohol and tobacco; the Oneida colony, established by John Noyes the Perfectionist, strove for a practical embodiment of the communist plan of life; and socialism, imported from France through Fourier, was to be based on "The Principles of a True Organization of Society.

Perfectionism [was] a movement which marked the extreme expression of the new conscience, the most revolutionary of its aspirations, the apotheosis of ethical radicalism. Its want of literary skill narrowed its appeal and the archaic quality of its enthusiasm lessened its following; yet in spirit it was native to Puritan idealism, and it enlisted the active sympathy of many of the finer souls of New England. How greatly reform was furthered by the movement of perfectionism is not easily determined, but it is clear that its influence permeated much of the revolutionary activity of the times. Scratch an ardent Abolitionist and you were likely to find a potential perfectionist.

Selecting more or less at random, and without any attempt at completeness, one would have to add Shakerism, Millerism, Mormonism, Spiritualism, and phrenology to the list in order to get an even remotely fair picture of the ferment that was abroad in the land during the first half of the nineteenth century.

Lest an impression of a national comic opera be giv-en, it should be observed that even the strangest of the enthusiasms were expressions of sincere and by no means irrational beliefs, as understood at that time.

The foundation of this democratic faith was a frank supernaturalism derived from Christianity. The twentieth century student is often astonished at the extent to which supernaturalism permeated American thought of the nineteenth century. The basic postulate of the democratic faith affirmed that God, the creator of man, has also created a moral law for his government and has endowed him with a conscience with which to apprehend it. Underneath and supporting human society, as the basic rock supports the hills, is a moral order which is the abiding place of the eternal principles of truth and righteousness.

For Christians the moral law was the will of God; for the small company of articulate free thinkers it was the natural law of eighteenth century Deism.

One scarcely should be surprised by the various, essentially religious, reforms that were advocated in a land where everyone was free to approach perfection in his own way, reading God's law according to his own share of light.

3. Transcendentalism

The most noted intellectual movement that arose in the midst of this ferment was transcendentalism. It has been traced to European sources especially Kant, but it also has been maintained that

this was largely a technical derivation for the American transcendentalists. The real animus of their activities was found in the local scene, where a rebellion took shape against the Unitarian synthesis of rationalism and Scriptural authoritarianism. In its reaction against all forms of evangelical piety, Unitarianism had hardened into a cold and formal creed. . . . The transcendentalists were Unitarians, mostly clergymen, who rebelled against their own denomination. It was at this point that the romantic movement in America came closest to making an open break with the past.

Yet the transcendentalists were "Puritans to the core" in dedication to "stern, unbending, uncompromising virtue." Transcendentalism was

 the mingling of an old world and a new world element, the blending of an idealistic, Platonistic metaphysics and the Puritan spirit, the fusion--at a high, revolutionary temperature--of a philosophy and a character. The white heat of feeling brought out the noblest outlines of that character and touched into actuality the potential mysticism which that philosophy a< PRE> hundred times has shown itself to hold.

Whatever its origins were,

transcendentalism was, . . . first and foremost, a doctrine concerning the mind, its ways of acting and methods of getting knowledge. Upon this doctrine the New England transcendental philosophy as a whole was built.

Despite some differences of Emerson, Parker, Alcott, and others,

there remains no possible doubt that in its large outlines they all held an identical philosophy. This philosophy teaches the unity of the world in God and the immanence of God in the world. Because of this indwelling of divinity, every part of the world, however small, is a microcosm, comprehending within itself, like Tennyson's flower in the crannied wall, all the laws and meaning of existence. The soul of each individual is identical with the soul of the world, and contains, latently, all which it contains. The normal life of man is a life of continuous expansion, the making actual of the potential elements of his being. This may occur in two ways: either directly, in states which vary from the ordinary perception of truth to moments of mystical rapture in which there is a conscious influx of the divine into the human; or indirectly, through the instrumentality of nature. Nature is the embodiment of spirit in the world of sense--it is a great picture to be appreciated; a great book to be read; a great task to be performed. Through the beauty, truth, and goodness incarnate in the natural world, the individual soul comes in contact with and appropriates to itself the spirit and being of God. From these beliefs as a center radiate all those others, which, however differently emphasized and variously blended, are constantly met with among the transcendentalists, as, for example, the doctrine of self-relianc! e and individualism, the identity of moral and physical laws, the essential unity of all religions, complete tolerance, the negative nature of evil, absolute optimism, a disregard for all "external" authority and for tradition, even, indeed, some conceptions not wholly typical of New England transcendentalism, like Alcott's doctrine of creation by "lapse." But always, beneath the rest, is the fundamental belief in the identity of the individual soul with God, and--at the same time the source and the corollary of this belief--an unshakable faith in the divine authority of the intuitions of the soul. Insight, instinct, impulse, intuition--the trust of the transcendentalists in these was complete, and wherever they employ these words they must be understood not in the ordinary but in a highly technical sense.

[Emerson] makes this inner sense not merely a guide to conduct, but a diviner of spiritual truth.

Intuition--that is the method of the transcendental philosophy; no truth worth the knowing is susceptible of logical demonstration.

4. Oriental Thought

In the United States "it was not until

 aboutEmerson's time that the Oriental was more than aheathen and his religious literature more than 

Emerson and his friends read the Hindus for their idealistic philosophy, a philosophy naturally congenial to the Transcendental mind. But they were also practical Yankees facing the demands of a work-a-day world; so they read Confucius, a sage as shrewd as any Yankee, and found in him effective precepts whereby to regulate their affairs with men. The Mohammedan Sufis provided poetry for their urbane and artistic needs. These three Oriental cultures were eclectically blended, despite their inherent contradictions, into a composite which in miniature is an excellent representation of that larger Transcendentalism composed of borro wings from Greek, English, French, German and native thought.

Since this is not a study of transcendentalism, the details of oriental influences on it will not be explored here, where the purpose is simply to show that Oriental thought was to be found in the United States.

The influence of Eastern thought did not cease with the decline of transcendentalism.

In 1875 the Theosophical Society was founded in New York.

Theosophy is clearly a syncretic system, a blending of Eastern and Western religious and philosophic thought and practice. It brings together elements from Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Spiritualism, Egyptian Hermeticism, perhaps something from Jewish Kabbalism, and occultism generally.

Perhaps the most significant influx of Oriental thought in "the return of the East upon the West" came through the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. "For the first time on such an occasion, Religion . . . had due preeminence." From September 11 through September 27 the World's Parliament of Religions met there, in the words of some of its objectives:

To bring together in conference, for the first time in history, the leading representatives of the great Historic Religions of the world.

To show to men, in the most impressive way, what and how many important truths the various Religions hold and teach in common.

To promote and deepen the spirit of human brotherhood among religious men of diverse faiths, through friendly conference and mutual good understanding, while not seeking to foster indif-ferentism, and not striving to achieve any formal and outward unity.

To secure from leading scholars, representing the Brahman, Buddhist, Confucian, Parsee, Mohammedan, Jewish and other Faiths, and from representatives of the various Churches of Christendom, full and accurate statements of the spiritual and other effects of the Religions which they hold upon the Literature, Art, Commerce, Government, Domestic and Social life of the peoples among whom these Faiths have prevailed.

To inquire what light each Religion has afforded, or may afford, to the other Religions of the world.