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The Soul and its Mechanism - Introduction
One of the most hopeful signs of the time is the growing understanding of the Oriental point of view, and the tendency to investigate it. The psychology of our two hemispheres is so widely different, the approach to truth so dissimilar, that only lately have students considered the possibility of their fundamental unity, and that a new outlook on man and his environment may emerge out of the fusion of the Eastern and Western interpretations of life. Old interpretations may fail, yet ancient truths will stand: old misconceptions may be recognized as misleading, but reality will radiate clearer light and beauty. From the union of our different sciences, thought and deductions, a new psychology may emerge based on the comprehension, so familiar to the West, of the structure which man uses, and the comprehension, so familiar in the East, of the energy or spirit with which man animates and directs his structure. These - the structure and the motivating energy - are not antagonistic but mutually interdependent. They have an essential unity. Western psychology concerns itself primarily with the structure, with the tangible objective universe and with the reaction of objective man to that world. It deals with man as an animated body; it emphasizes the mechanics of his nature, [19] and the instrument he uses. It is therefore mechanistic and deals only with that which can be subjected to tests and experiment. It investigates the body and accounts for the emotions and the mentality, and even for what it calls the soul, in terms of the body. Durant points out this position in the following words: "As for the Self or Soul, it is merely the sum total of the hereditary character and the acquired experiences of the organism." - Durant, Will, The Mansions of Philosophy, p. 75. It explains various types and temperaments in terms of the mechanism. Louis Berman sums up this position in his interesting book as follows: "The most precious bit of knowledge we possess today about Man is that he is the creature of his glands of internal secretion. That is, Man as a distinctive organism is the product, the by-product, of a number of cell factories which control the parts of his makeup, much as the different divisions of an automobile concern produce the different parts of a car. These chemical factories consist of cells, manufacture special substances, which act upon the other cells of the body, and so start and determine the countless processes we call Life. Life, body and soul emerge from the activities of the magic ooze of their silent chemistry precisely as a tree of tin crystals arises from the chemical reactions started in a solution of tin salts by an electric current. Man is regulated by his Glands of Internal Secretion. At the beginning of the third decade of the twentieth century, after he had struggled, for we know at least fifty thousand years, to define and know him. self, that summary may be accepted as the truth about [20] himself. It is a far-reaching induction, but a valid induction, supported by a multitude of detailed facts." - Berman, Louis, M.D., The Glands Regulating Personality, p. 26.
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