The Philosopher's Stone

I

THE mediæval alchemist believed, following the tradition of the great Aristotle, that man’s body, like all other material things, was composed of four elements, earth, air, fire, and water. Each individual had his own particular mixture of these — his temperamentum, as they called it. This was determined at conception and birth by the influence of the constellations and planets. The aptitudes, weaknesses, and chances of success or failure of each human being sprang from his elemental composition. Since no one had been properly mixed since Adam, the problem emerged of discovering some sovereign remedy — secretum maximum — which would cleanse and rectify man’s composition and so produce a superman, full of physical and mental vigor and enjoying a life prolonged through many joyous centuries. Hence the persistent search for the Elixir, or philosopher’s stone, which should produce these marvelous results, as well as transform the baser metals into gold.

There are plenty of reasons for concluding that the hopes of the alchemist were founded upon false assumptions; but the quest for a panacea for human woes has gone on, and has tried widely divergent paths. We are obsessed with the idea that we all have latent powers which are only awaiting the right signal to be set free and glorify life. We have a conviction of suppressed worth and potency which leads us to suspect that our inabilities are but the symptoms of some physical or mental maladjustment, which might prove to be comparatively simple and remediable, if only we could hit on the right way of dealing with it.

A lifelong personal experience of physical and mental depression and a constant observation of its operation in others has led me to the conclusion that it constitutes one of our chief modern enemies, not only to individual happiness and effort, but to successful social regeneration. Its workings are most insidious and assume manifold forms. Like Friar Bacon, I have continued to believe that we should not give up the search for the philosopher’s stone; but the claims of those which came to my attention appeared to me greatly exaggerated and, in my particular case, illusory.

But not many months ago I happened upon one of the numerous proclamations of a new elixir in a book with the exhilarating title, Man’s Supreme Inheritance.¹ It was introduced to the public by one in whose judgment in such matters I have uncommon confidence. I therefore took advantage of an opportunity to meet the author, and he has taken infinite pains to explain to me and illustrate the theory and workings of the plan of human regeneration set forth in his book.

I realize that I must here meet the inevitable prejudgments of the reader. He will naturally infer that I am going to describe and defend a new ‘cure.’ He may already have discovered the Elixir — Christian Science, osteopathy, psycho-analysis, chiropractics, mineral oil, assiduous mastication, or the frugal morning exercise. If one has already found salvation, why look further? We all know that cures are ascribed to all sorts of things, from the humble bacillus Bulgaricus to Our Lady of Lourdes. The number of things that appear to make people ill is exceeded only by the number of those that claim to make them well.

I am not telling my plain tale because I happen to have been redeemed in body and soul through Mr. Alexander’s method, or because I have known others to be so redeemed. I think his ability to straighten out adults and give them new energy and courage is very important, but by no means so important as the possible application of his theories in the field of education, by which it seems as if it might be possible to raise the whole race to a far higher plane than it now occupies.

One must also meet the objection of the disillusioned and properly skeptical reader, who will say that things are not so simple; that there can be no Elixir. He will cubby-hole Mr. Alexander’s ideas as neatly and finally as the Holy Roman Catholic Church files a recrudescent heresy under some well-known heading of the second or third century. I am not inclined to contend that all his ideas are new, or that his book, which clearly reflects the genial exuberance of its author, might not have been better arranged; or that anyone need accept all the philosophic reflections which accompany the exposition of his system. Nevertheless, no one interested in human improvement can afford to pass by his plan without carefully considering its nature and bearings.

II

Mr. Alexander, an Australian by birth and originally a dramatic reciter by profession, was born with a rather weak constitution, and at one time his voice gave out completely. He hit upon the idea that his troubles were due to some failure to control his muscles correctly, and, furthermore, that he was frustrating himself by unconscious muscular strains which served to hamper the proper action of the lungs and at the same time caused a vast waste of the energy he could ill spare. He set about to analyze the situation, and with the utmost ingenuity, not only cured himself, but devised a method by which he has cured hundreds of other people — from babies to elderly men and women. His method lies in substituting conscious muscular control and coördination for our old ill-considered habitual postures which we acquire as carelessly as we do all our manners and convictions.

After long experience in Australia, London, and New York, with children and adults, whether suffering from acute disabilities and contortions, or merely afflicted with an indefinable feebleness and lassitude, Mr. Alexander has become convinced that a great part of our misery and inefficiency is quite needless. He longs to reach all children while the task of readjustment and correlation is still an easy one. He is able to remodel in the most astonishing manner men and women who are over sixty years old. This part of his work he regards, however, as of secondary importance. He must make a livelihood. Moreover, he naturally happens upon adults whose abilities he longs to set free from the trammels of ill-health and depression. But his prime interest is in setting children right, so that they shall never demand, in later years, the types of exacting, special treatment which bad habits of long standing require. Children can, he finds, be taught easily and rapidly so that they need never suffer from the habits they form if left to establish their own false bodily dogmas. He would like to teach teachers, and he is constantly endeavoring to perfect and shorten the process of instruction. ‘The first principle in all training, from the earliest years of child-life, must,’ he holds, ‘be on a conscious plane of coordination, reëducation, and readjustment, which will establish a normal kinæsthesia, or muscular discrimination.’

The improved race which Mr. Alexander foresees ‘will be adaptable to any occupation that may be their lot.’ All they do will be done with the maximum generation of vital energy and the minimum expenditure of their resources — and this during the whole twenty-four hours of the day. To those who have been educated in the principles of conscious control, ‘no severe physical exercise is a necessity, since there are no stagnant eddies in the system in which the toxins can accumulate; and to them will belong a full and complete command of their physical organisms. The wonderful improvements in health — often deemed miraculous by the uninitiated — which have been effected in adults adumbrate the potentialities for efficiency which may be developed in the children of a new race.’

Mr. Alexander does not simply exhort one to exercise conscious muscular control: he actually remodels the body, as a sculptor models the clay; gives one a fresh and discriminating muscular sense, which not only does away with distortions and expensive strains, but reacts upon one’s habitual moods and intellectual operations.

Now this happens to be at once the most novel and the most difficult thing either to do or to describe. Mr. Alexander has done his best in his book to make clear what he does to regenerate the human system; he has not consciously refrained from giving away his methods, as one might not unnaturally suspect who did not know him. But only actual demonstration can make the process clear, and then only after considerable thought and experience. It varies with the individual who is receiving the ‘lessons.’ To coördinate adults would never be a task for any but a very exceptional and skilled practitioner; but Mr. Alexander believes, as we have said, that the art of treating children could be so standardized as to be carried on successfully by large numbers of men and women of good intelligence if they were properly trained. For in his experience a child responds with wonderful readiness, and a few lessons are often all that is necessary to give him the correct notions of posture and bearing. There is nothing magical in Mr. Alexander’s methods, but they involve a subtle coördination of thought and physical action which it is his striking achievement to have established and made available for others

III

Before considering his actual practice in more detail, we must stop a moment to recall certain facts and prejudices that have always to be reckoned with.

We all have to rely upon the working of a combined generator and motor which is at once producing and expending power. Few of us ask ourselves whether our posture or movements in standing, sitting, walking, working, and sleeping are at once most favorable for the generation of energy and least wasteful in its use. As Arnold Bennett says, we constantly abuse our bodies as no man could afford to maltreat the electrical system of his car. If the commutators are befouled, and if the brushes do not form a proper contact, one’s ammeter will fail to register the proper intake. This will be succeeded by an absolute deficit if the stored electricity is allowed to run off owing to improper insulation or defective contacts. The starter works feebly, the spark is no longer bright and vivid, the lights burn dim; even the voice of the creature fades to a hoarse whisper, and finally the whole intricate mechanism comes to a standstill.

If we have stumbled up on to our hind-legs from a quadrupedal ancestry, that alone might readily account for certain very common strains and expensive postures. But granting that, during the hundreds of thousands of years which mankind probably lived as a hunting animal, wandering through the forests and across the plains, he attained a proper adjustment without taking thought, this is no sign that, now that he works in factories and leans over desks and counters, he has hit upon the right attitude, and is not wearing himself out by entirely needless exertion.

Those of us who are conspicuously slovenly in our carriage are urged by parents, teachers, and friends to ’brace up.’ I have given myself this order and received it from others since childhood, but have found that my best efforts failed. Now I see the reason. No one explained to me what it was to ‘brace up,’ and I assumed that an effort to elevate my chest, buckle in my back, and bring my shoulder-blades as nearly together as possible was the desired end. This is what most people do when they endeavor to straighten themselves. While there might be worse positions, this one involves a great deal of strain; it tends to throw out the abdomen and does not really increase the freedom of the lungs. It is usually accompanied by a throwing back of the head, so that we really shorten rather than lengthen the body; for the kink in the neck and the inward bending of the spine at the waist produce a reduction in our possible stature. Mr. Alexander deprecates the military carriage on the grounds just given. If the resting Hermes in the Neapolitan Museum should jump to his feet and continue his way, our initial astonishment would be perceptibly increased if he assumed the attitude of a West Point cadet. The horsemen of the Parthenon frieze and the entrancing mounted Amazon ride rather more like cowboys than like hussars. This proves only that the Greek sculptors would probably have had no inclination to dispute Mr. Alexander’s contentions.

When things grow too bad and we are overtaken by depression, indigestion, and insomnia, we resort to ’exercise’ and ‘physical training.’ We try to find an artificial substitute for those activities which formed the daily routine of our hunting ancestors. That exercise is beneficial, no one will deny; but that it is hard to get into our lives, and is somewhat disappointing in its results and not very persistent in its effects, is obvious enough. We try to make up for the crampings and strains of twentythree hours in the day by a period of movement for its own sake, lasting perhaps an hour. Moreover, we carry over, even into our exercises, the same habits that exhaust us during our regular occupations.

We are all embarrassed in our efforts to gain proper bodily control by what Mr. Alexander calls our ‘debauched kinæsthesia.’ That is to say, our muscular sensations are blind guides. Most people prove on examination to have false ideas of what they are really doing and what they can do. We generally involve many more muscles than are necessary, and apply an excessive amount of strain. One of the first results of Mr. Alexander’s instruction is the conviction that physically we are fools, in spite of gymnasium practice and books on physical culture. We cannot even obey the simple order to put our head back or forward, or open our mouth, without unnecessary ado. We have to be taught to walk without using our neck and needless abdominal tension. It is hard to ‘relax’ in Mr. Alexander’s sense of the term, namely, put ourselves at the disposal of the instructor who wishes, by moving a limb himself, to give one a new kinæsthetic register of the correct amount of tension necessary. Our inhibitory powers are weak and erratic, and we suffer from a sort of bodily dogmatism which shows itself in a strong reluctance to grant that our habitual posture and movements are wrong. Then apprehension sets in and complicates the teaching, for the conviction of sin produces harassing anxiety lest we do the thing wrong.

Mr. Alexander is all too familiar with all these traits of the unregenerate. But he is patient and gentle, and with the traditions of an actor, each new audience of one comes to him as a fresh opportunity to explain and illustrate his art. He does not have to undress you, or ask you what is the matter with you, or establish your anamnesis. Your obviously faulty posture and movements immediately strike his keen experienced eye. If he can induce you to coöperate with him in the process of correlation, he is sure that you and he cannot be wrong. He invites no violent exercise — indeed, would have you refrain for a time from exercise, since it but serves to reinforce old and vicious habits. He does not force the change of mind and posture, but bids you have good hope that, by projecting the orders that he suggests, and reforming your bodily ambitions, and recognizing the vicious nature of your former habits and aspirations, you will, after twenty or thirty daily ‘lessons,’ lasting a half an hour each, find yourself, without intermitting your usual daily routine, a new person. But more than that, he promises that you will continue to improve when the lessons are over, and that the ideas they suggest will form an everdeveloping and inspiring element in your life. For, as he properly claims, ‘anyone who has acquired the power of coördinating himself correctly can readjust the parts of his body to meet the requirements of almost any position, while always commanding adequate and correct movements of the respiratory apparatus and perfect vocal control.’

IV

In his book Mr. Alexander describes as best he can the manner in which he gives lessons in conscious control, and at the same time so remodels the body that the patient is finally able to translate his new aspirations into daily conduct.² He realizes that the psychic and physical are always interplaying, sometimes obviously, usually unconsciously. One has to inhibit his familiar and quite unconscious muscular routine, in order to make way for the new, well-planned, conscious coördination. It seems to me to be Mr. Alexander’s fundamental invention to have hit upon an effective way of doing this. You are first shown your general incompetence to disassociate and control your movements; then you are given certain fundamental orders in regard to the relaxing of the neck, the position of the head, the lengthening of the body and broadening of the back. These are, however, at first mere aspirations, and you are forbidden to make any attempt to carry them out muscularly, for the simple reason that your old habits will not permit you to do so. As yet you do not know what it is really to relax the neck, lengthen the body, or broaden the back; but you can cultivate the hope of accomplishing these feats in good time. Mr. Alexander has discovered from experience that the bare orders, if often repeated, not only tend to cut out the old noxious strains and distortions, but have an essential positive influence in forwarding the substitution of the new and correct coördination.

Mr. Alexander then proceeds literally to remodel the patient, first sitting and then in a standing posture. He devotes his chief attention to the neck, lower thorax, and abdomen, but sees to it that one’s legs are properly relaxed. By pressing, pushing, pulling, stretching, and readjusting, — all quite gently and persuasively, — he brings you back into shape, rising now and then to take a look at you from a distance, as a sculptor might view the progress of his work. This process has a double effect apparently: it gradually increases your muscular discrimination, and at the same time the correct coordinations he makes tend to hold over and ultimately to become habitual. Slowly you realize that the sensations in your back and your consequent control are increasing. You sit and stand with ever greater ease and satisfaction. You learn to discriminate and separate muscular acts; to give yourself a long succession of commands and carry them out one by one, without involving any but the necessary and correct coördinations — to grasp a chair without implicating the muscles of the upper arm or shoulder, to manage your legs without using the abdominal muscles or contracting the neck.

When one is properly coördinated, gratuitous strain disappears; the lungcapacity is greatly increased, the method of breathing improves, the abdominal viscera are no longer compressed, and the natural massage in which our intestines engage can be carried on freely, thus aiding in the elimination of the poisonous products of life which cause such varied distress, physical and emotional. At last one has learned to ‘brace up,’ and, what is more, to stay braced up; to prefer the right posture to the wrong. And one enjoys all these advantages for twenty-four hours in the day; for one no longer suffers from the ‘ reabsorption ’ that so often makes sleep a disappointment.

V

A word may properly be said here of the whole matter of so-called ’mind’ cures, — including psycho-analysis, as contrasted with Mr. Alexander’s novel approach, primarily from without rather than from within. For many centuries European thought has been dominated by the false antithesis between mind and body, between the spiritual and the material, assumed to be engaged in an inevitable warfare. The Neo-platonists’ contempt for the body, carried over into Christian theology, still influences our theories of conduct far more than we realize. Even the psycho-analysts are in fundamental agreement with Augustine in assuming that sexual impulse is at the bottom of our troubles, and that mankind must be saved from within out. Modern psychology, on the other hand, is making clearer and clearer the inevitable and organic association and constant interworking of what we rudely classify as ‘ mental ’ and ‘ physical. They really cannot possibly be separated. Every thought and emotion reverberates through the body; and, on the other hand, every bodily sensation or function plays its part in determining-our perceptions, our hopes and tears and preferences and trend of speculation. Our ‘feeling tones’ underlie our moods, our hourly aspirations and aversions. So much that we call emotion is the perception of the momentary action of heart and lungs; as is naively acknowledged in our common daily speech, when we speak of a sigh of joy, or a heavy heart.

Now it appears to me to be the sensible thing to surrender the traditional dichotomy, or sharp distinction betwixt mind and body, together with the traditional eulogistic use of the word ‘spiritual and the depreciatory attitude toward the so-called ‘material.’ We should recognize that mind and body are really two phases of the same thing, so intimate and constant is their interaction. On some occasions we can best deal with ourselves from within out; on others, from without in. We need no longer feel any partiality for the one over the other — the real question is, does a particular method produce beneficent results ? The whole situation is still an unfathomed mystery; but to put it quite simply in its practical aspects, we all go on the hypothesis that our psychic conditions obviously produce, or are associated with, bodily changes, including posture and muscular coördination. No one questions the obvious bodily manifestations of elation and depression, for example.

Now Mr. Alexander, knowing, as indeed we all know, that our minds and bodies are constantly and inevitably working backward and forward, and that both have always to be considered in the psycho-physical manifestations which make up the whole of human life, has carried on prolonged experiments which seem to make perfectly clear the fact that the mind can be treated through the body in such fashion as to alter its tone and operations. A ‘grouch,’or resentment, or any form of ‘complex,’ —to use the Freudian word, — is physical as well as mental. By eliminating its physical manifestation, its mental aspect tends to disappear as Well. To have conscious control and a fine discrimination in dealing justly and economically with the body, is the basis of just and fair reasoning and of controlled and coordinated emotions. For example, labored attention exhibits itself in muscular contraction and strain. This hampers and distorts thought. Mr. Alexander would have us relax. To him a resilient and lightsome mood, which goes with proper muscular adjustment, is the promising one for free and remunerative thought; not fixed eyes, a furrowed brow, and tensed muscles.

The bearings of all this on the question of social readjustment and reform are very interesting. We seem to be driven by the present general bankruptcy of old ideas and institutions to a conscious, well-considered reconstruction, regardless of the venerated habits of the past. But Mr. Alexander well says, One of the most startling fallacies of human thought has been the attempt to inaugurate rapid and far-reaching reforms in the religious, moral, social, political, educational, and industrial spheres of human activity, whilst the individuals by whose aid these reforms can be made practical and effective have remained dependent upon subconscious guidance, with all that it connotes. Such attempts have always been made by men or women who were almost entirely ignorant of the one fundamental principle which would have so raised the standard of evolution [I prefer to substitute the word ‘reform’] that the people upon whom they sought to impose these reforms might have passed from one stage of development to another without risk of losing their mental, spiritual, and physical balance.’

This seems to me a true and profound remark. Bodily vigor should be our first demand in projecting reforms. Its increase would at once remove, or greatly lighten, the evils under which we suffer, and at the same time form the enabling clause in new projects. We are so bewildered in our attempts to determine where to take hold in the perplexities of the present, that we shall be greatly relieved if Mr. Alexander can prove that the most obvious, the simplest, and most hopeful line of reform is at the same time the most immediately essential and practicable. If it turns out to be a somewhat familiar ambition, and to lie in the correct management of our bodies, let not any Neo-platonic or Christian ascetic reminiscences prejudice us against it.

But the question whether or no robust health would produce in our natural leaders a spirit of cheerful emulation and a reduction of envy, jealousy, and suspicion, which would, in turn, take the form of efficient and energetic coöperation for the speedy elimination of flagrant evils, is somewhat beside the point. There is general agreement, except perhaps on the part of a few wayward ascetics, not only that health is a blessing, but that to the want of it may safely be ascribed no inconsiderable part of our present ethical and social problems. Crime, poverty, and the wretchedness of personal dependence have a close relation to bad bodily states. Most of our daily irritations and wrangles spring from physical depression. And from the same cause come boredom and hysteria. So in a thoroughly revised system of ethics might, not the obligation of physical well-being constitute Chapter I? If health were secured, many of our worst ‘temptations’ would lose their hold, and the number of painful ethical determinations would consequently be greatly reduced. So the remainder of the treatise might be much briefer than it was in the old editions. The road would seem much plainer and straighter than formerly. There would be fewer partings of the way, where the rugged and repulsive path must always be chosen.