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A Treatise on White Magic - Rule Ten - The Present Age and the Future
The outstanding characteristic, however, of the coming cycle will be an outgrowth of psychology. It will be the emergence of a new factor from the standpoint of the modern psychologist of the materialistic school and will involve the recognition of the soul. The mechanistic school of psychologists has served and is serving an invaluable purpose, and the findings of the behaviorists are sound in fact, though erroneous in conclusion. They serve as a needed brake upon the more speculative and mystical school, which is dignified by the name of introspectionist. Like much else in the world at this time, from two great lines of thought, such [337] as the mechanistic and the introspective or subjective mentioned above, a third will manifest which will embody the truth in both positions and duly adjust them to each other. On a larger scale this is working out in the fusing of occident and orient, of mysticism and occultism. We have no quarrel with either, but in the evolution of thought the main trends of ideas at this time are rapidly approaching each other and from them a synthesis will emerge which will prove an adequate platform upon which the coming cycle may make its stand. It might be of value here if we noted the tendency of three lines of thought, roughly speaking in the field of psychology. The mechanistic, laying the emphasis upon structure, ascribing the reactions of the human organism - mental, emotional, and physical - entirely to the material aspect, and regarding the structure as responsible for and giving rise to all the lines of conduct and characteristics which man displays, both abnormal and normal. The introspective school, positing a self or a conscious something which is responsible for conditions and which, as has sometimes been said, is "aware of awareness". This school of psychologists recognizes the structure but goes further and regards certain aspects of conduct, and certain reactions and problems as insoluble under the pure mechanistic process. They approach more nearly the occult position, but do not go so far. Then there are what I might call the vitalists, or that group of psychologists who, admitting the fact of the structure, yet regard it as subjected to the influences of energies and forces emanating from an outer environment. These are the energies of a wider nature than those arising entirely within a man's own self, and number among them the great basic urges for which nature itself is responsible and which can be seen and felt in units of organic life, other than the human. [338] The truth which is safeguarded in all these schools is one truth and each aspect of it is correlated. There is a mechanism through which the real man functions, and there is a structure which he has built up in conformity to the laws of nature and which he can learn to use and control. But, in accordance with the more subjective and speculative school he must learn to differentiate between himself, as the conscious center of awareness, the "I" upon the throne of intelligence, and the apparatus through which he can contact the outer world. When the "I", the user of the mechanism, can do this he becomes aware of another fact and that is that not only is he a generator and user of energy, and the director of a quota of vitality which is his own, but that there are energies and forces in nature and the planet, and also extra-planetary or cosmic, to which he can also respond and which he can learn to use and adapt. The three present schools are therefore, in embryo, custodians of these three factors. Under the present system of quarrel and separation, these three schools are occupied largely with disproving each other's theories. But they are all three of them correct in their facts though wrong in their deductions. They all three need each other and from a blending of the three presentations there will emerge the fourth, which will be nearer the truth than any of the separated three. When we come to the consideration of other basic trends in the world of current thought it becomes apparent that one of the most dominant is the increasing emphasis laid upon group consciousness, or environal awareness. This has been recognized by the man in the street as a sense of responsibility and indicates in the individual an egoic vibration. It is one of the first signs that the soul is beginning to use its mechanism. No longer does the man live in the interests of the separated self but he begins to realize the need for adjustment to [339] and in the condition of his neighbor. He assumes the duty of being in a very real sense his brother's keeper, and realizes that in reality progress, contentment, peace of mind and prosperity do not exist for him apart from that of his brother. This realization is steadily expanding from the individual to the state and nation, from the family unit to the world, and hence the big organizations, fraternities, clubs, leagues and movements which have for their objective the uplift and welfare of men everywhere. The necessity of giving instead of getting is growing in the racial consciousness and the recognition of certain of the basic concepts connected with brotherhood is steadily growing. Brotherhood as a fact in nature is as yet largely a theory, but brotherhood as an ideal is now fashioned in the racial consciousness.
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