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Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using
© 1971 Donald Edson Gates
(front flap)
0-682-46994-7
AN EXPOSITION-BANNER BOOK
ELMER GATES
and the Art of Mind-Using
DONALD EDSON GATES
Illustrated
Elmer Gates was a unique man: inventor, psychologist,

philosopher. His lifelong interest was the study of the human mind
and how the mind can be improved for the betterment of the world.
His scientifically based system of psychurgy, or the art of mind-
using, is designed to increase the powers of the mind, much as
physical exercises increase the powers of the body. As Elmer
Gates developed it, mind-using is a giant step in widening man’s
horizons and a revolutionary method of education.
This book details his thinking and experimentation from the
time he was a child. A comprehensive investigation of a
remarkable mind, it allows the reader to follow the developing
lines of a search for truth free from the useless mental
accoutrements that centuries have made customary.
Elmer Gates wrote, “. . . With the exception of such acts and
facts as of everyday verification and use, the mind has been almost
wholly falsified by the systems of customs and belief; by false
ideas, images, and concepts; false sentiments; by age-long
hypotheses inwrought in the fabric of language, so the mind’s
perceptions and understanding and knowledge and contents no
longer are in congruity and harmony with nature.”
More of Elmer Gates’ philosophy:
“A parent must remember that a right habit and disposition
formed in the child will be an ever-present guardian when it goes
out into the world. No greater punishment
(back flap)
can come to a parent than to see an adult child suffer heinous

punishment for a crime or mistake due to defective nurture and
training. No greater joy can come than success traced to early
training and example. Give your child love in the true and right
way with good training and when it gets older it will return it with
compound interest. A parent who does not strive at any sacrifice
to win the loving devotion of the adult child, misses the best thing
in life; and this adult love must be based on early example, habit
and training. No adult is ever so severe and correct a critic as a
child is of the delinquencies of a parent.
“Why is there war and oppression? Something is wrong in the
Universe. I have told what is wrong: man’s mind has been
deceived and misled by ages of systemized falsehood and
abnormal custom; it is diseased and insane. Its salvation lies in
sanity.”
This book is must reading for educators, philosophers and
psychologists—indeed, for all thinking men and women. It is a
sine qua non for anyone who wishes to improve the quality of life.
About the Author

DONALD EDSON GATES, son of Elmer Gates, has assembled
the material in this book from over twenty-five thousand pages of
letters, records and unpublished manuscripts that his father left at
his death. About seventeen thousand of these pages were to be his
father’s twelve-volume opus. The author believes that the
teachings of Elmer Gates, almost forgotten today, should he made
available.
EXPOSITION PRESS INC.
50 Jericho Turnpike Jericho, N.Y. 11753

[page i]
Elmer Gates
and the
Art of Mind-Using
Whoso gazes, even for a moment of clear vision, upon the

Torch of Psychurgy, will never again see any other light.
To get more mind, and utilize it as a machine, is to take
advantage of the greatest force in nature—Consciousness—the
cosmic force by which all other forces are known and
harnessed.—Elmer Gates
[page ii: blank]

[page iii]
ELMER GATES
AND THE
ART OF MIND-USING
by Donald Edson Gates
An Exposition-Banner Book
EXPOSITION PRESS, NEW YORK
[page iv]
EXPOSITION PRESS INC.
50 Jericho Turnpike Jericho,
New York 11753

FIRST EDITION
© 1971 Donald Edson Gates. All rights reserved, including the

right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form except for
short quotations in critical essays and reviews. Manufactured in
the United States of America.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER:

74-114058
682-46994-7
[page v]
Contents
Preface ix
PART ONE
Origin and Development of the Art of Mind-Using 1
1. Early Tendencies and Influences 3
2. Further Insights, Impulses and Purposes 41
3. Quiescence and the New Introspection 49
4. Bodily and Environmental Conditions 61
5. The First Period: Awakening to Predilections 75
6. The Beginning of a Scientific Art of Mind-Using 87
7. Attention, Dirigation, and the Newest Introspection 111
8. More Mind: Mind-Embodiment and Brain-Building 125
9. Steps Toward an Art of Discovery 143
PART TWO
The Thirty-Three Years’ Work 167
10. A Final Test 169
11. In Honor of an Important Event 203
12. The Laboratory Epic 219

13. The Laboratory Epic—Part Two 249
14. The Chevy Chase Record 281
15. The Bridge to Validation 309
16. A Cosmos of Consciousness 335
PART THREE
The Twelve Years’ Work 367
17. A Dominancy Won 369
18. The Business Dominancy Lost 391
19. The Growing Ideal 415
20. Time: All There Is 443
[page vi]
PART FOUR
The Three Messages of Elmer Gates 461

21. The First Message: The Twelve Volumes 463
22. The Second Message: The Institutional Work 479
23. The Third Message: The Teachers and Pupils
Association 493
Epilogue
The World-Teachers 505
Appendix

A Taxonomy of Heurotechny 533
[page vii]
ILLUSTRATIONS
Elmer Gates at 50
Kate Field’s Washington
Inscription in Gates’ Personal Copy of Dreiser’s First Novel
Mrs. Elmer Gates (Phebe)
The Elmer Gates Laboratories at Chevy Chase
A Notice of a Gates Separation Process
Elmer Gates and Elmer, Jr., in the Laboratory
Alma Pearl Edson (Pearlie), at 16
The Music Hall in the Department of Acoustics and Music at the
Elmer Gates Laboratories
Specimen Pace from Manuscript
Elmer Gates at 61
[page viii: blank]
[page ix]
Preface

This account of my father and his works tries to depict that
“greatest of all observable phenomena—a Person,” to show the
attitudes and points of view and methods and aims and
accomplishments of a genius in a new and unique line, to view the
workings of the mind of a man who was naturally a psychologist.
His was the study of an individual mind and the methods it found
natural in learning and teaching, in discovering and inventing, so
he studied his whole life and recorded it as mental growth, as an
actual experience. His work was his life.
The name of Elmer Gates is practically forgotten. Yet he
pioneered in an improved scientific method and an art of research
to discover a new world of mind and Consciousness. He published
no books, wrote no papers for scientific journals, sought neither
personal wealth nor reputation. His successful experiments were
made only to convince himself, as he planned later to demonstrate
his new methods. Two dozen public lectures in six years were
augmented by a few interviews and articles, hurriedly dictated, and
a flood of press notices, mostly appreciative, many inaccurate,
others pure fiction or fancy; yet the impress on his times was
immediate and far-reaching. His work attracted the sympathetic
interest and moral support of many persons scattered over the
world.
Eminent contemporaries endorsed his work and genius: “As a
discoverer and practical demonstrator of the subtle laws of nature
no man has achieved more and in so many departments of
knowledge” (Elizabeth Bryant Johnston, author); “He has gotten
nearer to the fundamental purposes of life than anyone
[page x]
else” (F. Parke Lewis, M. D.); “His educational ideas and
experimental originality, fertility, and clearness are destined to
produce far-reaching results” (Professor Patrick Geddes,
Edinburgh, Scotland; biologist, sociologist, educator); “I cannot
sufficiently express my admiration of the simplicity, the common
sense, and yet also the startling originality of his scientific

methods” (Professor C. H. Hinton, mathematician and physicist);
“A man of decided genius, destined to important achievements”
(John W. Hoyt, former governor of Wyoming Territory and
founder and first president of the Wisconsin Academy of Science);
“He is opening a new world of marvelous interest, new paths for
the attainment of knowledge” (F. Guernsey, editor, Mexican
Herald); “One of the great mental leaders upon whose periodic
appearance the advancement of thought depends” (Theodore
Dreiser, novelist).
The name of Elmer Gates became a household word—”an
Edison of the mind,” the “Wizard of Chevy Chase,” and was even
used in breakfast food commercials. Grateful beneficiaries wrote
calling him “master of compassion,” and “choice and master spirit
of the age.”
Then an international figure, Elmer Gates, at the height of his
acclaim and prestige, changed his plans and withdrew from public
view back into the hidden depths of thought and research. What
compelling duty did some new insight into his mission bring?
What were his culminating discoveries that caused him to exclaim
late in his career: “If these discoveries are what they seem to be,
their promise glows like an aurora on the dawn of the world’s
hopes!“
There is an overwhelming wealth of material in twenty-five
thousand pages of his manuscripts, records, and letters. This book
is largely an editorial selection from them, and hopes to show the
significant difference between his scientific approach and that of
speculative thinkers, although language is often wanting in the
communication of new insights and methods. However, a start
must be made, perhaps in the manner of the artist, Thomas
Hovenden, for whom my father named his firstborn.
[page xi]
Hovenden was a close friend, and once wrote about his working
methods to my father: “My large picture is under way—so far as
thinking it out more clearly, and that is a good part of the work in

my case. But I have not touched a brush to the canvas yet . . . and
have only drawn with charcoal one figure from life.” Likewise,
this account may serve for the charcoal sketch from which a more
finished portrait may appear on the canvas of progress as the
teachings of Elmer Gates become better known and practiced.
In preparing this book I was first indebted to my father himself
for early inspiration and for a wholesome respect for scientific
method, and especially for my having been heir to a natural world-
image unperverted by myth and superstition. My debt to my aunt,
Alma Pearl Edson, is also large for much help and encouragement,
and for preserving the manuscripts as well as for typing most of
them. Grateful remembrance goes to my wife, Eleanor, for her
sympathetic interest, patience, and optimistic confidence during
forty wonderful years together. Finally, my thanks must go to
Nancy V. Teeple for her valuable and expert editorial assistance,
conscientiously and painstakingly accurate. Her ability to spot
error, clarify expression, and improve balance is responsible for
much improvement in this book.
[page xii: blank]

Origin and Development of the Art of Mind-Using
[page 1]
PART ONE
Origin and Development

of the Art of Mind-Using
With an enthusiasm as deep as human nature I have sought to lead

mind to discover its own best method of working, to lead scientific
method to improve itself, for so far scientific method is THE BEST
OUTCOME OF THE AGES!
—ELMER GATES
[page 2: blank]
[page 3]
CHAPTER 1
Early Tendencies and Influences
The drama of Cosmos and me! The plot is evolution to more mind,
and the end is esthesia.
—ELMER GATES, “Introspective Diary”
Looking back over his life in one of his frequent analyses,

Elmer Gates, in 1910 (at age 51) summarized it thus: “If the mind
that I inherited from The All enabled me to attain to these
discoveries, it was because I was able to discover an art of mind-
using; and if I could not have caught the fundamental insight, it
undoubtedly would have been achieved by some other brain—
now, or epochs from now. I happened to be ‘ready’ to let these
dawning ideas ‘sit for their portraits’ (as Emerson said), and I was
in that condition of utter mental freedom that made it possible for
me to interpret my mental functionings without modifying them by
superstition and prejudice. I attained to the basic insight that led to
the mentative art (psychurgy), and the rest followed naturally and
inevitably. I accomplished the discovery of the mentative art
because I had the advantage of the knowledge that had been
accumulated by thousands of pioneers in many domains, because
my mind had the good fortune to escape the blight of myth and
superstition, because my judgment was undeviated by ‘authorities,’
and because I was trying to do
[page 4]
that kind of work that was then the culminating tendency of this
period.”
Earlier he had written: “From my earliest youth I have been
clearly aware of a special aptitude for the study of mind and
Consciousness, and an imperative impulse has urged me onward

from day to day, lured ever by the sweet anticipation of further

discoveries that would reveal more of that wonder of wonders
Consciousness and the human mind. But there has been ever
present another factor that has imperiously controlled the whole
course of my life: an overwhelming conviction that it was my
imperative duty and privilege to carry on this mission as a World
Work rather than as an individual career, and almost regardless of
the interests of a career. This feeling, this decree of my whole
nature was so urgent that no other interests or influences were ever
able to modify it.” (Elmer Gates used the word consciousness with
two distinct meanings: with a small c it meant a conscious state;
with a capital C it meant the more fundamental Consciousness
underlying a conscious state.)
There is no better example than Elmer Gates to show, from his
own observation, “that a man to the extent that he is predilectively
awake and aware is something more than an individual force; he is
also and more largely a product of the total progress of the world
in which he is an integral part.” In his life especially, the urge to
progress was not wholly of an intellectually definable nature but
also largely came out of the mind’s subconsciousness as strong
impulses to do or not to do, and as in-sights into the nature of
things that evolved themselves out of the general fund of conscious
and subconscious functionings. Out of them came growing
conscious purposes that were “resolute in getting certain things
done and later on found themselves justified when they were at last
accomplished.”
Elmer Gates had strong hereditary tendencies to good health,
long life, patient industry, and scientific pursuits. His ancestors
(Swiss, German, Dutch, English) for a least six generations were of
long life, with large and strong bodies, fair skin and chestnut-
brown hair. They were moderately well educated, of
[page 5]
considerable mechanical ability, influential in their spheres,
exceedingly active, of good musical ability, extremely practical
and honest, and without any record of crime, vice, drunkenness,
deformity, or chronic disease.
Six generations before, a Swiss professor, the earliest ancestor
of record, had gone from Berne to Berlin to teach mathematics and
to preach. There he married an intellectual German girl. Their
eldest son married a Holland Dutch girl; and their eldest son
married an English girl and emigrated to the United States with a
number of other people to escape religious persecution. Most of
them settled in Pennsylvania at the beginning of the eighteenth
century with the Pennsylvania Dutch; and a few, among them his
ancestors, settled in Virginia. The next generation went to Ohio,

where Elmer was born on May 6, 1859, of the fourth generation in

America. On both paternal and maternal lines of descent his
ancestors were Protestant religious teachers, who at some trade or
profession or agriculture made their own comfortable livelihood,
always refusing pay for preaching.
His father, Jacob Goetz (the way the family name was spelled
then), in addition to operating his farm, was a schoolteacher, an
architect, a millwright, a manufacturer of agricultural machinery, a
Baptist preacher, a good writer for religious journals, a fairly good
mathematician, and an omnivorous reader of historical, religious,
and philosophical books.
His excessively tenderhearted and highly conscientious mother,
Phebe (daughter of J. Diederich, an architect), was deeply
religious, fairly well educated and well read, and lovingly unselfish
to an almost incredible degree. To the simplicity, health,
normality, happy dispositions, integrity, and intense moral and
ethical and religious nature of his parents, Elmer Gates credited his
first and best start.
Fortunately, we can follow his account of his original points of
view and those psychological events, which led his mind to evolve
the art of getting more mind, and of using it more efficiently. He
was born with such predilections and into such
[page 6]
surroundings and influences that very early in life he was able to
take the first steps into his new and interesting line of research in
the study of mind and mental methods, which with unswerving
devotion became his consecrated lifework. His preponderant
predilection for the natural sciences led him, while quite young,
into an eager and earnest study of their elements, and into a study
of his own mind, which he instinctively regarded as part of nature.
He studied not mainly from books but from nature. He studied
objectively by direct observation and experiment (as in botany,
geology, chemistry, physics, and astronomy), and subjectively by
paying systematic attention to the workings of his mind (its mental
states and processes), which were not less interesting than the most
wonderful phenomena of objective nature. It never occurred to
him to regard them as other than natural phenomena. More
interesting than mixing chemicals, classifying crystals or working
in electricity, the mental phenomena had a greater degree of reality
to him (as mental states with actual qualities and durations and
interactions and sequences, and as spontaneous and willed
processes of states) than they had to anyone he knew. A mental
state rising into his consciousness and culminating and changing
into another state and disappearing was to him as much of an
objective event taking place in nature as the fall of a meteorite or

the sprouting of a seed. Accordingly the “subjective” laboratory

inside his own mind was a far more wonderful place than any
external laboratory could possibly be.
His first objective laboratory was in a corner of an old
fashioned rail fence, the corner roofed over and the sides boarded
in, and inside a blacksmith’s anvil and furnace and tools, and a
shelf for chemicals and apparatus. Unfortunately, a photograph of
it, as well as one of his parents and himself as a boy, were stolen.
Great was his pleasure when he did something new, or “fixed”
something for someone.
The interest that most children find in story books, he found in
getting knowledge and in making things. The objects in his
“museum” took the place of toys; experiments in his “laboratory”
[page 7]
took the place of games. He did not like a story unless it was true;
fairy tales did not interest him. His juvenile laboratory, as small
and incomplete as can be imagined, was to him “the holy shrine
wherein by experiment the Oracle was consulted at all hours, day
or night, and the universe was the Sacred Temple where Nature
(including Mind and Consciousness as the most important part)
was worshipped, accepting the sciences and arts as a ‘Bible’ that is
being constantly revealed by mentation.” Such was increasingly
his outlook from his twelfth to his twentieth year.
By a fortunate combination of the religious beliefs of his
parents and governess and early teachers, he heard but few of the
superstitions and fairy stories and mythologies that are usually “fed
to unsuspecting childhood,” and consequently by training as well
as by nature his mental attitude was such that the extravagant
impossibilities of these myths and fables were of no interest. Thus
the plain facts of the sciences and the ordinary phenomena of
consciousness were not insipid, but on the contrary held his
attention with an almost breathless and unflagging interest. So
also, despite a natural longing for the symmetrical completeness
and seeming finality of philosophy, he was led by predilection and
circumstance into the more wonderful possibilities and realities of
scientific knowledge rather than into the uncertain and ever-
shifting regions of speculation.
His first teachers were his parents, and also that remarkable
and well-educated woman, Virginia, of whom he said the highest
praise seemed inadequate (never mentioning any but her given
name). She made her home with his parents and acted as a sort of
companion and teacher, and with his other early teachers and tutors
took great care to teach him the elements of the sciences by
firsthand observation and experiment. His school life was in his
home much more than in the public schools. This home amid the

serene surroundings of a farm in Ohio, unusually isolated for being

near a city such as Dayton (not large then), was to him “replete
with the animated quiet of the woods.”
[page 8]
His father and mother taught him the earliest rudiments of an
education: reading, writing, arithmetic, German and English, the
use of tools in his father’s several workshops (carpenter’s and
cabinetmaker’s tools, general machine-shop and machine tools,
agricultural implements, clock maker’s tools, soldering and
brazing outfits, jeweler’s tools, and so on). They taught him as
systematically as if they were running a school for his sole benefit;
and this instruction was kept up even while he was going to high
school.
The governess Virginia, who had been educated for teaching
school, assisted in this instruction, taking more and more of it in
her charge as he grew older. She nurtured his love for the natural
and encouraged his inherited aspirations toward a moral and
religious life. His isolation from social distractions, and the
sincerity of his early teachers, had much to do with the natural
development of his early tendencies. By tendencies he meant
predilections and mental abilities; and by influences, whatsoever
promoted or hindered them.
The instructions given by these teachers from his fourth to his
fourteenth year, the four years in high school, the three years in
teachers normal school, and short elective courses in several
colleges constituted his early education up to his twenty-fourth
year. During all that time, however, he had a much more
extensive, thorough, and practical education from private tutors
and experiments in his laboratories than from any formal
schooling.
The educational systems and curriculums of that time left their
graduates, even those who had undertaken to perfect themselves in
some specialty, in a deplorably impractical state; and so “woefully
weighted down with undue respect for authorities and so misled by
unproved theories and hypotheses that when they attempted to
enter the practical work of their vocation they had to commence at
the beginning with practical men and learn their trade or profession
from the bottom up, where they should have started.” This had a
pronounced effect on the general policy and plan of Elmer Gates’
life, because it was
[page 9]
depressingly evident that the established courses of college
instruction were not adapted for the kind of training he needed..
He was determined that those instincts, predilections, and

impulsions of his mind that tended toward new routes of

observation and introspection and original lines of thought and
discovery should not be limited or distorted or diverted from their
natural course by any attempt to make his mental methods and
capacities conform to time-honored academic patterns. If by
reason of any degree of variation from the average mind his own
had developed and started in new directions, he did not want it
turned back into the old ruts by crowding it through the established
and narrow school curriculums. In this work of self-education he
sought the advice of educators and technical specialists and books,
noting everything that would fit him for his work; and every day he
also carried on his experimental research into the mind and
consciousness.
After this unusual education he more definitely and intensively
specialized in his own laboratories than he could have done in any
college, for there was not a university in the world that had
facilities or teachers for training in the lines into which he had
entered. Wilhelm Wundt, the father of experimental psychology,
established the first psychological laboratory in Germany in 1879.
G. Stanley Hall, a student of Wundt’s, established the first one in
an American college, at Johns Hopkins in 1883. J. McKeen Cattell
became the first professor to occupy a chair of psychology
exclusively, at the University of Pennsylvania in 1888, where a
laboratory was also established. William James became a professor
of psychology in 1889, publishing his Principles in 1890.
Munsterberg started at Harvard in 1889. Elmer Gates had been at
work in his own and different way since 1872, at age thirteen. At
various times and for a number of special researches he had in his
private laboratories specialists from whom he learned the particular
knowledge and skills in various technical arts and techniques in
physics, physiology, psychology, chemistry, microscopy,
bacteriology, and other fields in preparation for his serious work.
[page 10]
Childhood was for him “a holy, although a somewhat lonely
period,” profoundly influenced by the love and unselfishness of his
mother and by the sternness and practicality of his father; and
especially by his father’s workshop, always so well filled with the
machinery and tools of half a dozen trades; and by the
womanliness of his high-minded governess-teacher. Deep also
was the influence of the books of several fairly good libraries, and
finally of his solitary wanderings in the woods about his childhood
home. “Those woods! with their ponds and creeks and rivers and
shaded hills and early bloodroot and ginseng,” he wrote later with
tenderness, “childhood’s familiar haunts where nature first took me
into her confidence and when I first gave her my trust.”

“The mind of youth, unhampered by outward concerns, is

exceedingly plastic and impressionable,” he wrote; “comparatively
trivial incidents of but a few hours duration are long afterwards
remembered as events which seem to have covered months or
years.” However, as corroborated by letters and diary notes, owing
to a deep-seated prejudice against authorities of all kinds and a
deep-seated instinct, he insisted on being taught from nature rather
than from books, and this so agreed with the judgment of his
governess-teacher Virginia that she enthusiastically adopted that
pedagogic principle. His description of this enviable method
follows.
It was his intense wish to have his teachers follow the bent of
his mind’s tastes and insights rather than of their own. So definite
and dominant was this trait that he invariably refused or failed to
follow lessons otherwise forced upon him. His mind would rebel
from a lesson it did not want at the time, just as surely as his
appetite would rebel from food it did not want. Later in life he felt
sure that this strong trait saved him from having all that was most
original in his mind squeezed into the narrow and distorting mold
of some ordinary creed or curriculum. It was his desire—and his
teachers carried it out-that whenever in the course of daily life his
attention was attracted
[page 11]
to, and absorbed in, any object or event, he was then and there to
have a lesson upon that subject.
Was it an insect that attracted his attention? Then he was
forthwith to be shown that it had veins, ribs, or nerves in its wings;
while this other insect (conveniently produced from some
pigeonhole or box) had its gauzelike wings folded up and
concealed beneath an outer covering of heavier and stronger
sheath-like wings. And while his attention was still vivid, it was
proper thing to be informed that the “nerve-winged” insects are
called Neuroptera (from neuron, “nerve,” and pteron, “wing”),
while the “sheath-winged” insects were named Coleoptera (from
koleos, “sheath”), and so on. As soon as his interest began to lag
he was to be allowed the completest freedom to study whatever
else might attract his attention, and when the same day or the next
he again became interested in insects, he was to resume his lesson
in entomology just where he had left off. In this way classific
systems developed out of a seemingly chaotic mixture of subjects.
He was led to know the things before learning their classification!
If a flowering plant became the object of his attention, he was
for contrast to be shown a fern, fungus, equisetum, or other
flowerless plant, and be shown and told that there are two great
divisions of plants: Phanerogamia, or flowering plants, and

Cryptogamia, or flowerless plants; and to discover further

examples of each class was at once the purpose of a series of
rambles through fields, swamps, and woods. The samples thus
collected were kept for a time in an improvised herbarium. If a cat
was found nursing her kittens, he was to make a list of Mammalia;
and he was thus led to discover that some animals, like birds and
fishes, do not suckle their young; but that however different in this
respect, they are nevertheless alike in certain other respects, for
instance they have backbones, or vertebral columns. He was then
to make a list of Vertebrata, or backboned animals, which would at
once bring up the question of Invertebrata, or backboneless
animals. A rusty-bladed knife would
[page 12]
give his teacher a chance to explain how rust is formed; that is, if
his interest had naturally led him to inquire about it. The teacher’s
pedagogical method and subject matter, he insisted and his teacher
insisted, should grow out of his love for the subject; and out of the
teacher’s full knowledge would come just as much instruction as
his mind then needed, and (“How honest and splendid of her!” he
exclaimed) when her knowledge of any subject was deficient, she
would call to her assistance some professor or doctor or
mineralogist or chemist or physicist whom she knew-and she
seemed to know everybody. This natural method of pedagogy that
they formulated was an important factor in preserving his
originality, for thereby his mind was permitted to follow with
spontaneous attention its Path of Interest while being guided by
one who knew and loved and felt that subject. What more
favorable circumstances could have existed?
Experimental researches in the sciences so constantly engaged
Elmer’s attention that from his eighth to his sixteenth year and on-
ward he scarcely took time enough from thought and work to eat
and sleep. So deeply was he interested in his subjects that the
usual games and plays of childhood held almost no attraction. It
was a fascinating conception and play that he had two
laboratories—one outside his mind, filled with physical apparatus
and in which experiments were carried on with the outside world,
and the other inside his mind, filled with conscious states and
mental processes and in which experiments were made with the
subjective world. In the former, objects and physical forces would
be made to interact and the results noted, while in the latter,
conscious states and mental processes would be made to interact
and the results noted. Thus by a fortunate combination of
circumstances he found himself very early in life engaged in an
experimental study of the functional activities and states of the
“world within” in connection with that kind of constant reference

to the “world without” that led step by step into productive new
methods and techniques of psychological research.
In addition to this unusual education, another influence was
[page 13]
an inherited deep religious feeling, “as distinct as is the
appreciation of the beautiful in the fine arts.” As introspected in
his mind, this religious feeling was due to his “attitude to the
Whole, the Cosmos, towards the Known and Unknown or
imagined powers of The Beginningless. Morality is what one does
for his own welfare—a phase of the instinct of self-preservation;
and ethics is what one does for contributing to the welfare of
others. Historically these introspectively distinct feelings and
motives became mixed with distorting beliefs and myths, and when
the universe itself is regarded as a Great Spirit of the
anthropomorphic variety, the purity of the religious feeling is
affected.”
When Elmer Gates found himself in doubt as to what
constituted the moral and ethical right and wrong of any course of
conduct, he would instinctively go off alone (perhaps at night on a
hill in the woods) and get quiet and think and meditate over the
question of “conscience” and the “Light Within” (which was the
conviction of Virginia, she being a disciple of George Fox and
Elias Hicks). She once said: “You do not think it over when you
go off alone, you feel it through, as the Light Within shines on it”;
and this was the main religious teaching of his early life. When he
did anything that she thought should not have been done, she
would ask him to wait until he felt like being alone and then think
it over after the excitement of the incident had worn off. When he
had decided which part was right or wrong, he was to come tell her
truthfully what his judgment had been; and with a deep practical
wisdom she laid stress upon the ability to treat it as a problem to be
solved, to detect what was right and wrong--and she never scolded
or punished him for the wrong or rewarded him for the right. It
was deemed sufficient to be able to detect and acknowledge the
results of the moral and ethical self-examination; the rest of the
obligation was regarded as his affair. If he was willing to do what
he regarded as wrong or neglect what he regarded as right, it was
no longer her responsibility. During all the earlier years of this
training, which she regarded as religious, it was expected
[page 14]
that he would really try to “follow the Light Within.” Without
being able to distinguish between it and his natural moral and
ethical judgments based on knowledge and feelings, this was
carried out fairly well in his daily conduct. But there soon came

matters of conduct upon which he had no knowledge or feelings

for guidance and to which Virginia always sought “religious
sanctions” (which she regarded as the Light Within and which to
her meant conscience). This attempt to judge the difference
between the Light Within and conscience and his natural
disapprovals and approvals based on knowledge and feelings
forced him into an introspective tendency and gave much practice
in introspection.
That this practice did not lead him “into the barren deserts of
purposeless meditations, useless broodings, and mysticism without
a clue to its meanings” was due to the dominant scientific bent of
his mind. His daily studies, and even his childhood plays, were so
planned as to be somewhat of a systematic series of scientific
observations of the phenomena of objective nature that gave a
counterbalancing guidance; and as he regarded his mind as part of
nature he naturally applied scientific methods to it. The special
teachings of the different religious systems with which he came in
contact were such as to render him critically skeptical of their
special doctrines, dogmas, and creeds, but the profoundly religious
nature acquired by inheritance and training kept him ever in a
respectful and seeking attitude toward the fundamental aspirations
and meanings of the religious instinct. In the light of his early and
late researches he came to regard religion as one of the great
natural modes of human development. He could discriminate in
his mind between inherited racial religious instincts, often waning
survivals (in evolutionary language), and a modern and
scientifically based “insightive” feeling; and he found that just as
the feeling for the beautiful is identified with all knowledge and
nature and action, so is the religious feeling (when the mind is
undungeoned and free), and thereby morals and ethics also become
religious. After canceling the unscientific and unmoral and
unethical teachings
]page 15]
and practices of the various religions, there remains as a deep
background, he found, a real religious instinct and mode of
mentation.
An insatiable desire to know, always a deep influence in his
life, was much intensified by these introspective experiences. This
desire suddenly became still more intensified by a desire for true
knowledge, however little it might be. He wanted to know; it did
not matter what, provided he could know it to be absolutely true.
Next, the question became how to tell the true knowledge from the
false knowledge, the proved from the unproved—because any
portion of the unproved might be false. Entirely apart from the
utility of knowledge, he was animated by an overwhelming passion

for knowledge for its own sake, provided he knew “for sure and
certain and without doubt” that it was true.
“I want to know,” he said to his mathematics tutor, “just what
an absolutely known truth looks like. I want to know a group of
facts, however few, with absolute certainty, which no beliefs or
statements can contradict. With that iconoclastic club, I could
demolish all idols and doctrines and beliefs and speculations that
are not true; and with the method by which the mind can discover
such absolute truth, however little, I will have the Key to unlock
the Yet Unknown.”
“You are audaciously ambitious,” replied Professor Jordan.
“Yes,” Elmer continued, “but it is not merely I, it is the very
nature of mind that speaks and seeks these results.”
He was filled with an unappeasable desire and craving for
knowledge about the mind, with an ineffable desire to “rise upon
the stepping stones of ordinary knowledge” and by introspective
study of his mind, to a point of view “where some of the
undiscovered secrets of the universe might be revealed, and
something of the Eternal Mystery made plain.” He hoped that
through some mind, perhaps his own, a wholly new domain of
experience might be attained. Whether he could reasonably hope
to achieve such a result did not matter; the aspiration was a
powerful influence in his life.
This desire for some method of sifting the proved from the
[page 16]
vast mass of the unproved (which later led over the bridge of
introspection into the new domains of validation) was intensified
by the “chaos of contradictory beliefs in which the human mind
finds itself beclouded and oppressed.” The differences in belief
entertained by the best people he knew produced in him a degree
of surprise and consternation that was one of the directive
influences of his early life. These persons were equally sincere
and intelligent and honest, yet it would have been impossible to
construct out of the imagination differences of opinion more
widely divergent than were their convictions on political, religious,
and philosophical subjects. Moreover, their beliefs were
tenaciously espoused and argued with violent antagonisms and
personal animosities. The meaning of birth and death and the
issues of eternity were supposed to depend on certain arbitrary
beliefs. Yet earnest and sincere persons were at the widest
possible variance regarding questions of which many could have
been settled on the basis of actual facts. Against any one religious
belief or philosophical system that might be selected, all the others,
Elmer felt, would be arrayed as if in deadly combat to prove it
wrong.

He seriously wondered if the human race had gone crazy en

masse. It seemed to be a lunatic asylum let loose. “The Idealist
was just as honest as the Realist and argued just as well, the
Pantheist and Deist were just as sincere as the Atheist or the
Theist, the Spiritualist was just as much in earnest as the
Naturalist, the Catholic was just as dogmatically sure as the
Protestant, the Buddhist was just as fully convinced as the
Christian; the Democrat was as vehement as the Republican, and
the Pessimist was as arrogant as the Optimist, and so on throughout
the long list,” he wrote in astonishment. How was his mind to
judge between their varying and contradictory teachings and select
the true? But he was even more disturbed at the amount of error,
theory, and hypothesis in scientific textbooks, which were
supposed to teach demonstrated knowledge only.
This was not the whole extent of his consternation. The then
recent criticism of the Euclidean axioms of geometry, the great
[page 17]
number of psychological illusions of the senses, the Idealistic
skepticism regarding the existence of an objective world, the
historical fact that 99 percent of the theories advanced during the
evolution of science turned out to be untrue—these and similar
evidences led him, through a most radical skepticism regarding the
reliability of scientific knowledge and the normality of the process
by which it is attained, to inquire into the nature of the mind as it
was manifested in himself and the nature and validity of the
knowledge to which it is supposed to attain. The conflicting
teachings of scientific “authorities” forced him ever more and
more into skepticism.
When he reached what his parents and a few relatives supposed
to be the “earliest age of discretion,” they sought to impose upon
him their own sectarian or denominational views of religion; but
his understanding found these doctrines quite opaque, and for
many of their teachings he could not get the approval of his
conscience or of the Light Within. In a letter written during that
time he defined the Light Within as that approval or sanction
which, after eliminating personal interests and beliefs, he found in
his mind as to whether an act or motive was wholly in accord with
what he knew or believed to be just, true, and for the good of all
living things. Although he considered this not well expressed or
complete, it was one of the guiding principles of his life; and every
statement that was not in accordance was sure to be condemned
when exposed to the searching rays of that clear white light within.
It was a matter of profound regret and astonishment that for
some of the beliefs of his parents he could not find the approval of
his sense of justice, truth, and altruism; and this surprise was not

lessened when he learned that some of his tutors had religious and
philosophical opinions at variance not only with those of his
parents but with each other. His microscopy teacher was a
Materialist and Atheist; his mathematics tutor was an Agnostic; his
uncle was a Universalist; his governess was a Friend, or Quaker;
his parents were Baptists. He had friends who were Catholics,
Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Spiritualists, Moslems,
[page 18]
Buddhists, Pantheists, Idealists, Pessimists, Mystics, Occultists,
Thaumaturgists, and what not.
Further obscuring his wavering faith in human teachings was
his investigation of many of the current “omens” and “signs” of
superstitious people. He found them devoid of truth as stated and
believed, even when based on some misinterpreted truth. He was
confronted with the discouraging spectacle of intelligent,
apparently honest, and seemingly sane people sincerely believing
in almost every possible kind of absurd practice. He felt as if this
world were “an infinite labyrinth to whose mazes the clue had not
been found, and as if at every turn false guides had been
stationed.” It was hard for him to believe that a sane and honest
man would deliberately teach as truth something about which, in
his own conscience, he knew he did not know anything.
Quite naturally, very early in life he lost faith in the infallibility
of books and teachers, and daily gained a corresponding respect for
direct observation and experiment. At an unusually early age his
parents and teachers gave him instruction in a number of subjects,
particularly physics, chemistry, mathematics, history, botany, and
zoology; and in these branches of science he made in his
laboratories, or witnessed in others, almost every important
experiment, to find out the truth for himself. He read German and
French as easily as English and could “make out” Latin and Greek;
but except for the beauty of literature, he became suspicious of the
reliability of books, even scientific books (apart from mathematics,
physics, and chemistry). He was naturally inventive, both in
literary composition and in mechanics, and at the same time that
his doubt was growing he was pondering why during certain
periods new ideas came easily while at other times no amount of
effort would produce original, creative thought. He was much
influenced by this experience, and again and again by the fact that
except upon matters of undoubted knowledge, his friends and
teachers held antagonistic views. He fretted so much over these
matters that for many months he daily went alone to meditate
several hours at a time, hoping to devise some way to settle in his
mind the great question of what

[page 19]
constitutes Truth and Duty (and Opportunity). He concluded that
the difference between knowledge and false-hood could be settled
only by actual or inductive experience, and not by abstract
speculation and philosophical theorizing, and that the tenacity and
degree of conviction for a belief was not an argument for its truth.
But he soon discovered to his consternation that even induction
leads to mistakes, that it is only relatively true.
At this time his mind became filled with a still more profound
skepticism. Like Descartes he doubted not merely every statement
of religion and science and common knowledge that could be put
into words, but with a more fundamental skepticism he doubted the
integrity and sanity of the human mind itself. (Later, his friend,
Major John Wesley Powell, director of the U.S. Geological Survey
and outstanding scientist-philosopher, remarked that this was the
most extreme skepticism ever reached by the mind of man.)
It occurred to Elmer as a gruesome conjecture that perhaps just
as cancer is a diseased growth in the body, so may humanity and
organic life as a whole here on earth be a pathological or diseased
condition in and upon the earth. May not the mind that manifests
itself in living things, and in the human race in particular, be an
abnormality, and all its functionings and conscious states
fundamentally biased with delusions of error? If so, every idea,
desire, emotion, act, every statement that can be put in the form of
a proposition, may be false and misleading. Why not?
The ominous question having arisen, it was necessary for peace
of mind to inquire if there is anything that can really be known to
be true. It was at least true that such a question had arisen in his
mind; that much was certain. But even this bit of knowledge was
in the form of an idea and was stated as a proposition, and might
be the product of a biased or diseased mind. He meditated,
wondered, longed for an anchorage. It was evidence of a healthier
view when he concluded from observation that some persons
(whether the mind is sane or insane) succeeded in getting more
happiness out of life than others and were more
[page 20]
successful in their undertakings. This fact at once overwhelmed
him with an uncontrollable desire, to know all about “judgments,”
and this led quite naturally and inevitably into the beginning of a
systematic attempt to study the mind scientifically.
Once again he took up experimental researches in several
branches of physics, especially along inventive lines, not so much
for making discoveries as from a persistent curiosity to see for
himself just how the mind goes about making a discovery or
invention. To those who were unaware of this purpose, it was a

mystery that anyone should carry on “experiments in physics in a

machine shop to study psychology.” But he was making
discoveries in physics to find out how the mind makes them, and
he was busy demonstrating, proving, testing them to find out how
the mind makes itself sure whether a datum is true or not (as
distinguished from illusion, error, or theory). This was a new
method of psychological research, and the instinctive beginnings
of the Mind Art.
Always several lines of development seemed to be
simultaneously going on in his mind. Experiment and observation
in the sciences had indicated that it was not easy actually to corner,
capture, and establish a fact. Reading and conversation constantly
disclosed the strange situation that the most eminent authorities
differed widely on questions that seemingly might be settled by
processes of thought based on observation and experiment. He
started out to search for such data and for a method of more
indubitably proving them, and found himself trying to decide
which one of a number of methods to try first. A dozen years or
more might be required for even a partial test of an alleged datum
by any one method; and the best and most originative years of his
life might be spent in trying the wrong ways. Might there not be
some instinctive guidance, or some guidance in the nature of the
mind itself? Are not some kinds of judgments better than others?
If so, then follow the best judgments in selecting lines of research
for finding out the best ways of discovering and validating
knowledge and ways of thinking about facts.
[page 21]
Upon the advice of some of his teachers and friends he studied
everything available on scientific method, but was disheartened by
the paucity of the literature. He read Roger Bacon, Francis Bacon,
Whewell’s History of the Inductive Sciences, and Watts on the
Mind; he read John Stuart Mills and Bain and Herbert Spencer; but
he found nothing more decisive than the relative validity of the
inductive method (for he did not accept the dictum of any of the
alleged revelations as scientific proof).
Consequently he naturally took a step of his own in the study
of practical judgment-values. He made an elaborate tabulated
record of all the conduct-decisions of moral and ethical right and
wrong that he made, or that his teachers and friends made, in order
to determine in the light of subsequent events which kinds of
judgments proved to be effective and reliable guidance, hoping
thereby to eliminate from his rules of conduct those kinds of
judgments that did not prove worthwhile. Should no practical
difference in outcome be found between an act based on the Light
Within and a conscience-judgment, they would be regarded as

practically identical. If these two should prove to be different from

judgments based on knowledge or feelings or beliefs or
superstitions or previsional intuition, or on subconscious
judgments, and should they differ from each other, he would thus
find out about the obscure things. So far as he was able to learn,
this was the first scientific study of the kind: to discover
differences in the reliability for conduct-guidance of different
kinds of judgments, evaluated by subsequent events.
For example, he found an important difference between
judgments based on the Light Within and on conscience. It took
long practice to eliminate the misleading effects of fear and hope
and desire and superstition from either kind. He found conscience
merely an automatic alarm that rings whenever actions do not
correspond to beliefs, and that there is a fundamental physiologic
and psychologic Light Within that is based on knowledge and
normal feeling and is capable of true guidance. In all matters of
volitional action, knowledge-guidance (of which the Light Within
is a partial phase) is incomparably best. In
[page 22]
matters outside conscious knowledge, the judgments of
subconsciousness are more reliable (being based on knowledge-
experiences that do not ordinarily get above the threshold of
consciousness). Feelings are not guidance-judgments but
imperative and unreasonable commands, concerning which
judgments may be exercised. Psychologically he found the Light
Within to be a form of judgment that consists in a consensus of all
modes of judgment, supervised by one’s ideals and aspirations.
The ideal Light Within is the conscience that will accept only true
knowledge for guidance.
Elmer Gates was so impressed with its possibilities that the
study of judgment-values was continued. He concluded that the
voluntary activities (conduct) of certain persons almost invariably
led to undesirable or worthless consequences, while those of others
almost always led to desirable and useful consequences.
Furthermore, since there is an invariable and determinable causal
relation between the kind of act and the kind of consequence, there
should be a determinable relation between judgments that lead to
acts and the consequences of the acts. One man apparently under
the same conditions and with similar abilities will succeed in the
very effort in which another fails. In the instances studied, 10
percent of them failed because of insufficient attention to the
matter in hand, 51 percent because of lack of knowledge and
ability, and 20 percent because of mistaken judgments. Contrary
to expectations, failures were not nearly all due to wrong
judgments, unless the failure to pay attention was caused by wrong

judgments on the part of the 10 percent at the time the matters

were first planned, for wise judgment would have led to proper
attention. In like manner the lack of knowledge and ability may
have been due to wrong judgments at earlier periods in the lives of
the 51 percent, leading them not to acquire the needed knowledge
and ability.
These questions reopened the whole investigation. It was
necessary to make a careful study of cases. Under conditions that
seem similar, one person judges wisely and another unwisely; one
has a “feeling” or “impulse” not to do certain things and
[page 23]
subsequently finds he acted wisely, while the other finds he acted
unwisely. What is the difference between the impulse of the
successful man and that of the unsuccessful man? Since
conscience can be trained, it follows that it can be set to ring when
one’s actions do not correspond to one’s knowledge-judgments (or
Light Within) and thus get conscience to act as a mentor, like a
fully formed habit (to which class of mental processes Elmer found
it introspectively belongs). The Light Within has to give an
account of itself to knowledge, but conscience acknowledges no
master but belief, except that sometimes it seems to be a reflex of
fear or desire.
How deeply interested Elmer became in this subject! As he had
been taught the experimental and observational methods of
science, he accordingly undertook these methods to study
judgments. His training in observing objective phenomena led him
to try to “observe” what was going on in his mind when a
judgment was being formed and otherwise introspectively to study
the inner world of mind. He did this with the same systematic care
previously devoted to the study of the outer world.
This was a new line of psychologic research. The following
notes made at that time (1872) show the seriousness of this
thirteen-year-old scientist.
“In order to settle doubts regarding the nature and reliability of
conscience and other forms of judgments, I am making a
systematic study of all kinds of judgments by exercising each kind
on each motive, plan, event, and act; tabulating the approvals and
disapprovals, and afterwards recording the consequences of the
acts based on them, hoping in the light of subsequent events to
learn from the good results which kinds of judgments are safe, and
from the bad results which are unsafe. It is not easy to
discriminate between conscience and the ‘Light Within,’ or
between them and those indefinite promptings, impulses, leadings,
and predilections which, whilst they are not data of knowledge, yet
nevertheless under various names (such as intuition or

presentiment), potently lead and drive us into many of the

decisions and acts of our lives. Moreover, it is necessary to
distinguish
[page 24]
between all those above-named states and such others as hope,
desire, fear, prejudice, dream-impressions, and suggestion.”
From these data and further experience he came to the
conclusion that there is a great difference between the reliability or
guidance-value of the kinds of judgments, and that even for the
same kind there is a difference in persons, and even in the same
person at different times. This difference depends in a great
measure on the way in which a judgment arises. In one person it
may arise out of a long and pro-found conscious and subconscious
gestation of all the knowledge and feeling and other kinds of
experiences he has had upon the subject, while in another it may
arise in an offhand manner, with not all but only part of his mental
content having been consulted. In one an impulse to do is often a
transitory whim not belonging to his dominant predilections, while
in another it is an overpowering mandate he cannot resist. What is
the cause of the difference? Young Elmer reached such
conclusions as these:
A judgment of any kind that is based on less than the total
mental content (so far as relevant) is not as reliable as when it is
based on the total mental content, provided it consists of true
knowledge and normal feeling and tested skill.
If the relevant mental content is made up of false and true
knowledge, the judgments are just as apt to be wrong as right.
Habitually an average mind that has not been psychologically
trained in systematic mentation and in introspecting a classified
synopsis of its mental content furnishes itself when called upon
(that is, presents to its attention) only some small portion of its
knowledge and feeling relating to any subject.
These conclusions, of value in themselves, were not the more
valuable result of the researches. Elmer found not only that
constant reconsideration of his judgments, and appraisal of them
according to consequences, made him more careful in making
judgments but that he was actually making better judgments. He
had unintentionally been undergoing a judgment-training a method
later developed into a scientific guide to practical affairs.
[page 25]
Morning, noon, and night Elmer practiced introspection to
detect differences between kinds of judgments. This daily exercise
led to a confirmed habit of introspecting very early in life, when
the mind is most plastic, developing a most unusual skill. This

tendency did not lead into speculative habits of thought and morbid
self-analysis, because the judgments were all carefully verified by
events, and introspection was from the start combined with those
experimental methods that are efficient in science.
An early glimpse into his final line of work brought the
realization that the experimental methods of science could be
applied not only to the introspective study of judgments and morals
but also to the development of an art of mind-using-an art that
would give to ordinary minds more and more of the capacities of
genius and talent. The idea that there could be a “scientifically
determined method of mentating was a gradually dawning glimpse
into the promised land of highest hopes.”
These methods of testing his moral approvals and disapprovals
profoundly influenced him not only at that time but throughout
life. The tabulated study, kept up for a dozen years thereafter,
pointed out, as if by a decree from the nature of things and
therefore from his own nature, what was to be his work and
mission in life. This study of his own tendencies, aptitudes, and
weaknesses indicated the paths toward success and away from
failure in his chosen line of work.
Thus, while still young, Elmer Gates got face to face with the
idea that in studying the mental states and processes themselves,
rather than objective phenomena, the secrets of success were to be
found. This was not such a study as was being made by the
psychologists of that time, but a far more intimate study of the
inner nature and workings of the mind than had ever been made.
He was deeply, even religiously, impressed with the demonstration
that acts which produced undesirable consequences were almost
invariably based on ignorance or false knowledge, or had not
arisen out of the whole scientific mental content; and conversely,
that acts which most frequently produced desirable consequences
were based on extensive scientific knowledge and
[page 26]
true feeling and arose out of the whole conscious mental content,
and also out of a natural fitness for that kind of effort combined
with a true knowledge of the actual conditions of self and
environment with reference to that specific act, or were led by
normal feelings and an indefinable impulsion. These conclusions
were legitimately deducible from the data of the tabulated record
of judgments and acts, regarding which the main factors were
introspectively obtained.
He found that mere belief or fear or desire for the impractical is
capable of modifying these judgments, especially the purposes and
incentives; and therefore it is a matter of vital concern what one
believes. One should be wary of beliefs, except so far as they are a

matter of knowledge. There is but one safe belief: belief in true

knowledge, for impulsions and leadings are apt to arise out of
pathological instincts and are of a lower order of guidance-value
than scientific knowledge. But even when aided by true
knowledge and normal feelings, some persons have the power to
make judgments that are more in keeping with the actual
conditions of inner and outer things than do others with seemingly
the same mental equipment, because they have genius capacities
and also a greater ability to utilize their subconscious-ness.
This introspective study of his mind was the most profound
influence in young Elmer’s life.
Another of the most potent and interesting factors was the
influence from the mind’s subconsciousness as impulses and
“leadings.” It seemed to him with increasing introspective
vividness that in all conclusions and judgments he had been
utilizing only a part of his mental content. Was it an illusion?
What constituted his mental content? Why did he have such
feelings or presentiments or intuitions or previsions or urgings or
apprehensions about things? This is when he began to study the
mind’s subconscious powers. It is doubtful if the strongest
influences in his life, especially during these early years, were at
all times his predilections for scientific pursuits. The consciously
[page 27]
known incentives were not always the strongest tendencies at
work in his mind, but sometimes he was much more forcibly
impelled toward activities for which the incentives were not
consciously known but felt as a predisposition. He called them
leadings, being careful to point out that nothing occult or mystical
was implied but only the pulling of the subconscious on his best
abilities. Even before he knew why or what he was aiming at, his
tendencies were mainly mindward. His thinking and wondering
about the mind were utterly irresistible, and his pleasure in
watching the movements of the mind was so well known to his
early teachers that one once remarked, “He must be able to know
more about his mind than we do of ours.”
Long before he had begun his study of the elementary sciences,
he looked upon the mind as “being far more wonderful than
mountains or seas or the starry immensity of the heavens”; and
although he knew not why it came to be so, the mind was to him
“as really and truly part of nature as is the Milky Way or the moss
covering the mound on which I sit.” Mind was never merely and
only his mind, but also something vaster and more basic than any
and all human and animal minds. He was always much disturbed
that only one of his early friends could understand this conception
of non-individualistic and impersonal Mind, which “is the most

momentous and important thing in nature and whose possibilities

are not exhausted by all the actual minds in all worlds in all ages.”
He once expressed it by saying, “There can be a bigger mind than
any actual mind known to us. I do not state this as a datum of
science but as an actual conviction that influenced me. That which
we name electricity is capable, no doubt, of manifesting in a
greater number of ways than has ever been witnessed. There is
more to it than we know about or inquire, and just so it is with
mind; the mental abilities of all known living things from cells to
mankind and of all higher species which yet may evolve or that
may evolve on all the planets are even now contained within the
possibilities of Mind.”
[page 28]
A letter written to his teacher when he was fourteen years old
expresses this belief in another way, and he never lost his concern
for world problems:
“Dear Virginia: It pleased me to see you agree that the only
important and hopeful feature about this petted planet on which
about fifteen hundred million of us live is this—that it has on it
such a wonderful and potent thing as Mind, which can discover
and apply Truth. Were it not for that one thing I would despair.
Therein lies the power and guidance to program. The difficulties
of the human race will not be surmounted and the problems of this
world will not be solved unless they are solved by the Mind.
Through Mind, Truth becomes the Light of the World. I have seen
the Light and shall follow it. . . . The most useful thing that can
happen to a child is not to be born with a silver spoon in its mouth
but to inherit a bright Mind—nothing can compensate for having
been born with a mediocre mind. . . . If my present insights are
reliable I am enough of a prophet to predict that it is within the
power of science to give any person more Mind-as you have heard
me promulge.”
This inward urge and impulsion and insight led Elmer to watch
his mental processes while they were engaged in solving a problem
in geometry or algebra or devising an experiment in chemistry or
physics long before he had any intention of making a special study
of the mind. Again and again he would engage in solving a
problem or working out an invention or “thinking out something to
write upon a subject,” and wonder and wonder at the seemingly
incredible fact that the mind can invent a new device or discover a
new bit of knowledge. From the first he was not so much
impressed with the solution as with the goings-on of the mind.
This attitude was not merely instinctive: he saw it as seemingly
urged upon him by the total nature of things (among which was the
mind). He was irresistibly constrained to do the thinking and

introspecting just to feel the goings-on; and so that the thinking

might be real, he attacked real problems in mathematics, physics,
chemistry, philosophy, and invention to watch the workings of the
mind and feel it in the process of
[page 29]
arriving at results—“wondering at it and reverencing it and being
almost overjoyed about it.” He felt that he must do it, not because
of any incentives or set purposes, but because, like Walt Whitman,
he “felt an imperious conviction as total and irresistible as that
which makes the sea flow and the globe revolve.”
At times during his long career, Gates would take joy in
research work, in making ingenious and useful inventions, in
proving or disproving a theory, in making money, in doing
systematic experimentation for extending knowledge of a subject,
but suddenly, even in the midst of the most successful and happy
period of such work, he would feel an almost total loss of interest
in it, and with an unutterable longing and with an unyielding
tendency of his mind toward something else, with reference to
which he had no conscious purposes or incentives, he would want
to investigate that something else (shorthand, the Chinese
language, crystallization, osmosis, the history of the world), and it
would not leave his mind. It was an overwhelming tendency to
investigate a certain domain of nature or think about a subject
without having previously had any plans or incentives concerning
it. He happened to call it a leading when it was first designated (led
by inherited and phylogenetic tendencies and abilities), to
distinguish it from a conscious plan or definite incentive of the
usual kind, as when one studies shorthand to be a stenographer.
But he had no intention of using it professionally when he was
impelled to study all shorthand systems; and later this knowledge
filled a gap in his plans. It was like when you get hungry for a
certain food: you find your-self hungry for it, and that is all there is
to it. When he had a leading, it was simply “borne in upon him” to
occupy his time and thought with this or that subject without
knowing why, and in spite of seemingly strong incentives and
purposes relating to other lines of effort in which time and money
had been spent and practical results were desired and about to be
reaped.
For example, under such a leading he was impelled to lay out a
course of experimental study of crystallization. After
[page 30]
getting started, circumstances compelled him to drop the work, and
with a lingering regret he never had time to continue. Ten years
later others published discoveries relating to crystals which he

could not have avoided making with his proposed experiments.

No doubt, he believed, his mind needed that knowledge and
experience. After learning what others had discovered, he still was
unsatisfied and just as eager to take up these researches.
Now he did not explain this phenomenon in any occult way.
Just as the curative powers of nature (vis medicatrix naturae) ‘the
“conatus” of certain writers—heal a wound and structurally build
tissue, so he believed nature is a whole and heals its wounds and
directs its growth and processes intelligently but not necessarily
consciously. “It is probable,” he wrote in his sixteenth year to a
friend, “that these powerful and reasonless impulsions or leadings
are, after all, but the reflex stimulation of certain dominant and
predilective abilities, pregnant with a new idea or thought or
insight, and getting ready to give it birth.”
The attempt to understand these impulsions and leadings of the
mind’s subconsciousness led him into exhaustive and long
continued investigation of spiritualism, thaumaturgy, astrology,
palmistry, magic, hypnotism, and like subjects, but he found in
these no valid explanation. He later studied medicine and obtained
a “little light.” Finally a full explanation was subsequently found
in the interaction between the mind’s conscious predilective
abilities and the abilities and tendencies of the mind’s
subconsciousness. A leading is a resultant of the interaction
between a person’s predilections and all which lies below and
above his conscious mind or is immanent in it; it is the whole
Cosmos and subconscious mind acting in and through a person,
using his whole mind, body, and environment as a functional part
of a larger whole-as a part of the Cosmic Process (in which Mind
is a factor). The mind, especially through the subconscious and
infralogical processes feels, without knowing the reason, the
influences of the resultant as a strong tendency but not as a
consciously known incentive or purpose or impulse to do.
It is neither a mysterious nor an unusual experience, this
[page 31]
matter of subconscious impulsion. Most persons do follow such
leadings, and if the whole transaction is within their knowledge
and experience, they are more apt to succeed than not. Most men
of big affairs are influenced by reasonless impulses to do. In any
case, Gates was frequently influenced by them. “It may be that
such leadings or impulsions or hunches or intuitions,” he thought,
“are but an echo of old phylogenetic instincts, as when certain
animals continue to migrate annually to districts which have
become inimical. But that is one of the kinds of mistakes the
subconsciousness makes. Again it may be the beckoning from the

conatus; and it may be the subconscious judgments from data that

have not risen into consciousness.”
Sometimes he would feel the injunction laid upon him to
experiment in a particular domain, to try certain experiments. It
did not follow that they would produce important results, but he
found that they led to experimental data, which he felt he could not
have done without, and which his mind needed. Whenever he felt
that he could no longer avoid taking up the work indicated by a
leading, when the matter intruded almost like an obsession into
daily thought and work, when important matters were dropped to
take up the indefinite but irresistible leading, he was inclined to
believe that he was led by a larger part of himself than his
conscious mind. During the early part of his career he could not
help dropping all other matters, including important business that
could have made an income for life, and devoting his whole time
and thought and all his means exclusively to an exploration of the
mind. It was not possible for him, time and again, later in life, to
avoid spending his time and money in completing a course of
investigation, then hurriedly as consulting physicist make just
enough to pay for the next step of experiments. He felt that he was
unavoidably compelled to complete each period of work just as
soon as possible, at any expense of labor and money, so he might
then, and not at a later period, be profiting by the results.
Gates related the story of De Quincey, who, not being able to
resist eating opium, hired a bodyguard to keep it away from
[page 32]
him, then bribed the bodyguard with a larger sum to let him have
some. A leading is not pathological like morphinomania, but it is
probably as irresistible. Gates could resist one—and even did so
for years just to learn if he could—but he concluded that he should
not. It should be done, if normal, to complete his self-expression.
Sometimes the work indicated by the leading was taken up just to
get rid of being bothered by it, and nearly always it led to
unexpected and important developments in his lifework.
Gates’ leadings were mindward and toward the “Inner World”;
and then toward the “Very Inmost” of this Inner World to get a
more fundamental knowledge of the “Outer World.” Whenever he
most intensely wanted to know about the objective cosmos, he felt
the leading (accompanied by a dim insight) that the only way
better to know the Outer World is to get deeper into the Inner
World. Later this became an intelligible purpose based on further
discoveries, but at all times he was more potently led to these
predilective efforts.
Another strong influence, his religious disposition, brought him
a first glimpse of validation. This disposition was not fostered by

the theological or creedal teachings of the religions with which he

came in contact. They had the opposite effect, although he was
influenced by the characters and teachings of most of the great
religious teachers—Confucius, Gautama Buddha, Christ, Fox, and
Hicks—and all the poets from the earliest to Whitman and
Emerson, whom he regarded as geniuses in their lines just as
Newton was a genius in mathematical physics. His closest and
most influential teacher, Virginia, shed upon him daily what she
believed to be the spirit of the Light Within. The sectarian
teachings of his parents and other relatives and friends only tended
to prejudice him against their specific teachings, with the effect of
making his natural religious attitude toward “The All, The Whole,
the Infinite Cosmic Process burn more strongly within, with an
intense emotional appreciation of the glories of nature as a Living
Whole—a whole including mind, and alive with the conatus” (and
not German or Fichtean pantheism, he insisted).
[page 33]
“I often sat alone,” he wrote, “out in the woods on a hill at mid-
night amazed at the wonder of the immeasurable vastness of the
sidereal system (who has not?), in which our little speck of an
earth forms so small a part, and felt our insignificance (who has
not?); but in my contemplation of the Infinite Universe and its
eternal home in the continuum of Space and as never-ending in the
continuum of Duration I did not only feel the sublimity of vastness
and the humiliation of my insignificance but I was always
distinctly aware, to my oneness with IT and overwhelmingly
AWARE that what I knew as me, myself, is actually that much of
the Cosmic Process going on as me (not Solipsism), and I devoutly
contemplated it as the doing of The Eternal All-a little of the Now
of Eternity. For several hours, night after night, when the mood
was upon me while all alone and while the dominancies of daily
life did not intrude their cares or excitements, I sat in speechless
adoration and ecstatic surprise, gazing mentally into the limitless
WHOLE wondering if out of its shoreless Cosmos could come into
my pygmy mind an enlightenment and inspiration.
“O the ineffable hours of almost unbearable joy (how well I re-
member them!) as I pondered upon this Space-filling Mystery
which from Eternity to Eternity has manifested itself in
multitudinously various forms; and now after a beginningless Past,
here it is, for me—just as I see it, just as I feel it . . . and I, I am a
part of it! It is part of myself; I am born out of it, an inheritor of Its
nature and possibilities! “With a profound love I called it my
World-home; and to the Regnant Power in it I yearningly looked
for knowledge, and for the ability to be useful to all evolving life,
and looked for relief from the seemingly irremovable doubts into

which my contradictory teachers and books had plunged me.

Perhaps never again will I experience the pristine emotional fervor
of those halcyon days of longing aspiration and prophetic hope;
never again will I attain a like zeal and enthusiasm. I remember
that I reached the climax of conscious emotional intensity while
craving for a sure basis of indubitable knowledge when I had the
insight that it was to be
[page 34]
found in Consciousness itself (and nowhere else). It is not possible
for words to describe the utter amazement which filled me
whenever I contemplated the wonder of the Universe and the still
greater wonder that any part of it, as myself, could be conscious.
To know more, and to know only truth, became the dominant
incentive and purpose and impulse of my life; and it was
unquestionably evident to me that it was my mind that must do the
knowing and learning—upon it I must depend for ability, for
correct judgments, for discoveries, and for the joy or sorrow of my
existence.
“Marcus Aurelius said: ‘O Universe, I wish what Thou
wishest.’
“To me, however, the universe was not mainly physical but a
mental cosmos. I paraphrased the prayer of Aurelius: ‘I, a child of
Life, born out of Thy nature, 0 Consciousness, wish what Thine
own Nature wishes, and am a devotee of that standard.’”
Another profound influence of this period was the deep
conviction that Mind, or Consciousness, is as much an essential
and primordial part of the universe as is matter and motion; that if
Mind had not been eternally in and of the universe, there could
never have been such a thing as a conscious being; and that the
principles, processes, and nature of all minds, and of the cosmic or
universal condition that constitutes Mind, must be expressed in his
mind. To that Cosmic Process which is the ground of mentation,
with religious devotion and unswerving aspiration, he looked for
that kind of subconscious guidance which would come in the form
of better functional activity of the mental processes, as insights, as
new and true ideas, as normal impulses and motives, as true
esthetic appreciations.
Virginia encouraged those mental habits that gave him
acquaintance with his mind, and he acquired introspective skill.
The hours of his conscious life were to him joyous “entheasms.”
This looking to the highest directed the cosmic elements of mind in
him to that kind of conscious and subconscious functioning which,
because his attention was vividly and persistently focused

[page 35]
upon the question for which solution was sought, was, as he
learned later, most likely to lead to new ideas and insights about it.
This intending the mind upon these subjects, month after month for
several hours daily, led him to evolve a number of philosophical
ideas that were new to him but most of which, he afterward
learned, had long been the property of the great thinkers of the
world. This pleased and instructed him, that his mind had been
able to attain some of the great thoughts that others had previously
attained.
Solitude much enhanced this introspective tendency. He was
much alone during childhood and youth. By chance he had very
few play-mates or acquaintances of his age. This gave ample
leisure for reading and meditation, and he took profound pleasure
in communing with his mind. In addition to daily study of the
elements of science, he always spent an equal or greater time in his
subjective laboratory making his mind experiment upon itself.
Almost every day also he kept up the practice of going off alone in
quiet surroundings, as on the hillside: “. . . with my beloved trees
and would contemplate my beloved stars moving majestically in
the sidereal vastness. I would also feel my integral oneness with
that Mighty All and try, by virtue of its nature in me, to get the
guidance of its presence (in my mental functionings) so I might be
led toward greater normality and truer insights. 0 the ineffable
yearnings of those silent evening hours, alone with the Eternal
Cosmos and alone with Consciousness—the two central facts of
the ages! 0 the prayers, too intense to be voiced, that out of that
natural regnancy of Cosmos called Consciousness, there might
come the insight to lead the race out of its muddle of beliefs and
theories! How is it possible that our world, being part and parcel
of that MIGHTY and ETERNAL PROCESS, can be so steeped in
ignorance and crime, so strained and stressed by antagonistic
customs and contradictory beliefs? Long and long I sought for
some Ariadne’s clue that would lead my mind through the dark
jungles of philosophy and belief, dark with ignorance, out into the
open and sun-clear plateaus Of TRUTH. Long and long I sought
eagerly
[page 36]
for some insight that would lead me to some sure basis of
knowledge that would give me faith in the beneficence, or at least
in the rationality, of the Cosmos.”
“Unless,” he wrote at that time, “there is some small part of
REALITY that can actually be known—unless the mind is capable
of attaining, however little, of that true knowledge and know that it

is true, then forever is Man adrift in a rudderless ship, without

chart or compass, upon a shoreless sea in endless night.”
This desire for a criterion of truth was so emotionally strong
that to discover a method of validation was a religious necessity.
He felt that “unless the mind can discover some valid mode of
knowledge-getting, and know it is valid, it can never sift the false
from the true in human beliefs; it is all a question of attaining a
true knowledge of itself and the Cosmos. Where is it to find that
rock-bottom basis? In the mind or outside it, or both? It is self-
evident that even if found outside the mind it must be found by the
mind and by mental methods, and whatever is thus found is mental
content.” And thus, out of experimental studies in the “outer” and
“inner” laboratories and out of his yearnings and meditations and
impulsions and influences came the first of a series of insights that
guided to-ward the discovery not only of an art of mentation but
also of a criterion for a validation more fundamental than
induction.
He further described it in this way: His last station upon the
frontier of the known, before he started out into the unknown to
discover, if possible, a realm of indubitable knowledge, was the
time-honored one of Greek philosophy that placed furthest out
upon its borderline the advice “Know thyself,” and the still older
one from the immemorial speculation of the Orient bearing the
legend “Inquire within.” By a different method, and traveling in
the opposite direction, modern science has flung far and wide
another frontier marked by a border-line upon whose remotest
guidepost is the motto “Induction.” The frontier of the inner world
had been pushed to the limits of the old methods of introspection,
and further progress was balked by speculation. The frontier of the
Outer World had been extended so far that
[page 37]
its data became unwieldy from their number, and obscure because
of the theory and hypothesis inwrought with them (owing to
defects of method and because the validity of its fundamental
process was being questioned). With a new point of view of all
these frontiers, Gates started into the unsurveyed regions. Perhaps
the most significant feature of this study of the mind through
which he was passing was the marriage of introspection and
observation—the close union of the two methods in one mind.
Idealists and mystics, he emphasized, have seen only the Inner
World, without being able to distinguish between its realities and
its mirages. Materialists and scientific observers have seen only the
Outer World, without being able to tell which part is objective or
subjective. In his mind these two worlds were looked upon as one
world, inextricably interrelated and combined until each world be-

held its face in the mirror of the other. Outward things, such as
trees and mountains and stars, were not real things to his mind in
any truer sense than were the mental states and processes. The
latter seemed more fundamentally real. Others would talk of
authorities outside himself, such as books and objective things, or
of authority solely inside himself, such as the Light Within and
speculative idealism, but both the Inner and Outer worlds seemed
to him to be only a portion of the one reality.
This long and constant introspection by what proved to be the
beginnings of several new methods revealed a number of new and
highly important facts regarding mind and the nature of
knowledge. These discoveries placed the whole subject of
scientific method before him in a new light, directed him into a
method of regulating mental functions that was productive of more
than the usual discoveries, and gave a rigid and critical conception
of the nature of knowledge. This incidentally did not ensure
respect for “authorities” but gave increased confidence in an
improved inductive method that he was beginning to discover.
It became increasingly evident, however, that the improved
method was still inductive, that the truth was only relatively true,
[page 38]
and that the proved datum contained no factor of absolute validity.
He was therefore still not sure of the sanity and normality and
validity of the mental processes by which facts are determined. An
experiment does indeed seem to give facts, and he found it difficult
to doubt them, until it occurred that this seeming certainty might,
for aught he could then prove, be only the “seeming” of a
pathological process of a deluded mind. Obviously if mind in
living things were a diseased or abnormal manifestation like
cancer, then falsehoods and illusions might be true to such a mind.
The “facts” of observation and experiment, such as he had been
laboriously verifying, could be considered facts only if the mind
were reliable and its testimony valid, and the Cosmos rational.
Here was his dilemma: “If the mind as it evolves or manifests
on earth is fundamentally biased or diseased how can it be of use
to prove anything? And what would it matter anyway? How can
certainty arise out of it? How can even one simple fact be proved
beyond doubt? Yet some one fact MUST be found as a standard, a
criterion, a test by which to judge other alleged facts if we are to
validate anything; if we are to find a method of complete
validation we must first find an absolutely known CRITERION! If
even one such fact could be ascertained then we would have one
specimen of truth—one datum, with which if other alleged facts
were not congruous, we would know them to be falsehoods.”

It did not at that time seem probable that the mind could ever
discover any fact about itself that would justify the validity of its
own Process. But the problem was brought distinctly before his
conscious mind, and the task was set to the subconscious
processes. “Soon I was deeply convinced that the basis of my
belief in regard to the possibility of true knowledge and complete
mental sanity was actually then being established scientifically in
my mental process,” he wrote, “that the faith that is intrinsic in
every scientist, artist, artisan, philosopher, and immanent in every
joy, fact, morality, ethicality, worshipful attitude toward the
WHOLE, is capable of being based on an
[page 39]
absolutely known datum which every mind of adequate capacity
will accept indubitably when once it is known. If so, can I fully
find it and know it? Can any adequately evolved New-age mind
find it?”
His parents must have experienced much joy when their only
child, Elmer, was born to them late in life and they watched him
grow into the exuberant health and vigor of an active boyhood
filled with eager interest in everything. They must have been
proud of his early evidence of scientific ability and mental maturity
beyond his years, but must have viewed with astonishment if not
alarm that he “found their sectarian doctrines quite opaque and not
in accordance with his conscience.” His early teachers must have
felt well rewarded, watching his exceptional development into
prodigious productivity, which we will see.
[page 40: blank]]

[page 41]
CHAPTER 2
Further Insights,
Impulses and Purposes
These early insights and influences were conceptions of a

mentative art, but it took over a quarter of a century to understand
their significance by means of further discoveries which more fully
interpreted and justified them.—ELMER GATES
Insofar as the result of mentation was an insight that

illuminated a subject to make it more interesting to him and arouse
his whole disposition, its actual value was in its directive effect, for
until validated, Gates cautioned, such insights and ideas are not
knowledge and are otherwise valueless. But these intellective
insights and esthesic uplifts and exaltations were often “sun-clear
beacons” leading in the right direction, he wrote in Volume 1, so it
did not matter whether they were fully true or not as later analyzed.
Only a few are given-just enough, he hoped, to convey somewhat
of an understanding of the influences and conditions that led to the
new methods of research successful in making discoveries and
inventions—such a rapid succession that the method became more
significant than any or all of the discoveries.
One insight that continued to grow in clearness and force
[page 42]
was that there is an actual Reality. You know and feel it to be so,
else you would not be feeling and knowing. The mind as part, by
its Reality nature, ought to be able to know something about that
Reality by the mind’s intrinsic mode of knowing as well as by its
inductive experience with phenomena and objects.
Another insight was that the mind must find within itself by a
study of itself the rock-bottom fact of Reality, and that fact must be
the fundamental cause of knowing. “Objective science must derive
its sanctions from subjective science” was one of his maxims at the
time. Another was “Scientific method is mental method.” He was
profoundly convinced that the method by which the sciences are
created consists in the mental processes of states by which new and
true states (scientific knowledge) are discovered, by which like
states are segregated (classification), by which true states are sifted
from untrue (validation), by which the world’s fund of states is
acquired (education), and by which this knowledge and feeling are
applied (practical life). The study of scientific method therefore
resolves itself into a study of the mental states and processes by
means of which a science is created, learned, and applied.

Another insight was inextricably coupled with an imperative

impulse-to-do, which he at once began to carry into deed, and
continued throughout his life. It was that the mind having gained
such knowledge about itself as that which he had acquired by
experimental introspection and other scientific observation and by
insight should continue to study itself to get more information
about this inner manifestation of Reality and then utilize this
information as a guide to more knowledge and experience of the
same kind. By introspecting the ways and modes by which this
further knowledge is obtained, the mind ought then to discover the
true mental method of discovering. A vague glimpse indeed, but
an actual beginning of the art of mentation.
If during the past, man’s mind has attained any true knowledge
whatever, then that proves that the mind can discover knowledge;
but first the knowledge must be proved actually true, and how is
that to be done? As we do not know, the alternative
[page 43]
is to take that part of our alleged knowledge that we have most
reason to believe true-and not merely hypothesis or theory,
tentatively accept it, and proceed to study how the mind attained it.
Inasmuch as by that mind man has been able to survive, it
presumably is in sufficient harmony with Reality. If there is any
true knowledge in those sciences and arts upon whose practical
truth modern civilization is based, it must have been put there by
the mind of man, and any additional knowledge must be
discovered by the activities and functionings of the mind.
Reaching these conclusions was a long and arduous process,
animated at every step by the most intense feeling and prayerful
eagerness to know the truth. The result of this thinking was that
like Socrates, Gates did not know anything for sure. Can the mind
ever come to know even one fact for sure? How often during those
memorable years did he eagerly wish for just one unquestioned
fact! How uncertain everything seemed whenever he realized that
neither science nor philosophy had given certainty of one such
fact!
“Reality manifests itself to me in two ways,” he said: “as my
own mind and as the objective world, but that is knowable to me
only by means of my mind, and perhaps incompletely and
inaccurately and even illusorily. Both of these manifestations
constitute the whole Reality as I know it.” He had done enough
experimental introspection to satisfy himself that this Inner World
looks as if seen through glasses, as he said, that are given definite
colorings by the mind’s own nature out upon the Outer World, and
that the distortions, limitations, tintings, and shadings of these
glasses add their own modifications to what is seen. Thus by

mental steps of his own he had independently arrived at Kant’s

doctrine that the mind impresses its own constitutive nature upon
the knowledge that is obtained of outward things. But he saw, he
believed, a little further: “ . . . while the mind impresses its own
nature upon outward things, it happens that the nature of mind and
the nature of outward things are one and the same nature, because
both are manifestations of the same Reality, constituting two forms
of that which exists, and therefore these
[page 44]
natures must be alike and corroborative of each other. The mind
puts its stamp on what is known of outward things and on them
(insofar as it purposively modifies them), and the outward world
puts its stamp on the mind, and this mutual modification is all a
causal and functional part of one cosmic process. These are
objective and subjective factors that are both produced by an
activity of a Reality of which the inner and outer worlds are
symptoms, and the method which, as a result of the interaction of
the two worlds produces knowing, may be discovered by an
introspection of that which does the knowing; by an observation of
that which is known; and by effecting a synthesis of the two kinds
of data.”
His conclusion, also otherwise arrived at, was that the Outer
World cannot be known without the Inner World, and the Inner
World cannot know itself without the Outer World, and neither can
exist without the other, nor can the two worlds exist without the
hitherto unidentified Third World.
Still another insight was accompanied by such an inexorable
impulse- to-do that it immediately became his Life-purpose: to
select someone with a good mind and set it to work on these
problems and then keep it at work from earliest youth to fullest
maturity, so that by trying longer and harder than ever before
attempted, it might attain a wider experience and a higher
knowledge in that domain. This mind should be systematically
trained in introspection from childhood to adulthood to create an
introspectional specialist, just as a violinist must be trained from
early youth. Furthermore, this introspector should have inherited a
special aptitude or genius for introspecting, just as the great
violinist must begin with a special musical aptitude. If this plan
were conscientiously and ably carried out, notable results might be
anticipated. If a mind thus set apart and consecrated to the special
task of studying itself were to attain the highest results, it should
not be unnecessarily disturbed or interrupted during its great
attempt, requiring such a selection and regulation of
environmental, bodily, and mental conditions as would not divert
or retard its natural development.

[page 45]
Gates decided to immediately select an average mind like his
own, or better, and put it to work, not so much for the new
knowledge as to discover the mental methods by which it was
attained. That knowledge would then be applied to the
improvement of mental methods and the perfection of mental
states and processes so that ultimately, by knowing how more
skillfully and efficiently to use itself in mentating, the mind might
be better able to discover enough more knowledge about itself to
still further improve its methods, states, and processes, and so on,
until by perpetual improvement it would attain such skill and
knowledge of the art of mind-using as would enable it to discover a
sure and certain basis of knowledge-if such was within the limits
of human possibility.
“With an irresistible impulse-to-do that swept me from every
mooring and with a conviction that knew no alternative,” Gates
wrote, “I concluded to select my own mind for this great task. I
deliberated, trying to find sufficient reasons for a course in life I
knew I was bound to take. I had a wholesome attitude towards my
lifework, took deep joy in it, and desired to use it for the good of
others. I had taken steps in the study of the mind, much bigger
ones than I could then describe. I knew that I knew many new
things about the mind that were of utmost importance. I was
actually engaged in psychologic research, and all that was
necessary was to continue my training until the maturity of middle
life to make me a technically-equipped specialist along that line;
and along with this training I could make a serious lifework of the
study of the Inner and Outer Worlds and their relations. Had it
been possible to find anyone else willing to put his whole life to
this task I would gladly have supported him, guarded him, and
supplied experimental facilities, but as I could find no one that
seemed to have anything like my own introspective skill or
enthusiasm, I rejoicingly accepted or rather usurped the task for
myself; or unfortunately I accepted both tasks, that of making the
researches and the money to support them.”
Otherwise stated, a study of the mind to determine something
[page 46]
definite about its inner nature and the nature of its relation to the
Outer World, its possibilities, its modes of functioning and the
methods of mind-using, the reliability and validity of its
knowledge, was the life-work he most ambitiously undertook.
A further development of this purpose led to a determination to
start with a knowledge of all that the world already knew about
these subjects—to glean from every domain every fact, law,

principle, incident that might promote mental activity, improve

mental methods, and augment vital energy. He planned a course of
reading with assistants to collate whatever information might be
obtained, but was disappointed. He found very little, and
concluded that the required knowledge would be found not in
books but in a scientific study of his mind by experiment in his
own laboratory. The human race had not had its attention called to
methods of mental functioning from the standpoint of an art of
promoting it, he observed; consequently literature was practically
silent on the subject.
His close associate at the time was his uncle, Jesse Franz, and
with a dry humor to match. Gates enjoyed telling this story about
him. “One day my uncle remarked that I would surely die of old
age before I could collate the sum of human knowledge; that I
would have to confine myself to my specialties, physics and
psychology. I replied, holding a little book towards him, ‘I have
already found a beginning.’ Looking at the diminutive volume he
gave me a questioning glance and I mentioned the name of the
book, ‘Watts On the Mind.’ Misunderstanding, he replied
‘Nothing much, but there will soon be plenty on my mind if I learn
all you collate if you get that lightning activity of yours focused on
the job.’ “But soon all the subjects like planets were revolving
around the central sun of my scheme as I outlined it, and he gave
me considerable money and helped at the work until he died soon
after. Just before his death he jocosely remarked that ‘If your work
is destined to have a like effect on helpers, you would do well to
insure their lives in your favor.’ And dear Uncle Jesse died in my
arms.”
“Words cannot convey how deeply I regretted not having a
[page 47]
gigantic intellect of an Aristotle or a Newton,” he despaired, “so I
might be able to better cope with the difficulties of my task.” He
felt cheated, that out of the infinite opulence of existence there had
not been given him equal facility in every line. Feeling sorely the
weight of his responsibility, he resolved not to shirk the
opportunity, hoping that his excessive love of the work and his
unbounded desire to accomplish it might in a measure supply
whatever abilities he might lack; and he believed an art of
mentating would soon make up for any deficiencies.
“These insight-urgings and impulse-plans,” he emphasized,
were not mere intellective understandings but very much more;
events in a life that amount to a crisis. The emotive concomitant is
intense, like emotion in a dream, with the unswerving urge and
responsibility of the work felt as a mission, as a ‘call’ in the
evangelical sense, and this change in a life is psychologically like a

religious ‘conversion.’ The intellectual part of an insight-

impulsion is like the flash of a firefly while the emotive impulsion
is like illumination of the morning sun.”
In addition to the money his Uncle Jesse had given, Gates had
some of his own, and he made some more. So began two other
lines of research in which he was “almost breathlessly interested”:
an experimental study of introspection, and an experimental study
of the effects of bodily and environmental conditions on mentation.
His laboratory notes on these two subjects were so mixed, he
pointed out, and their mutual bearing so intimate, that it was not
easy to segregate them.
[page 48: blank page]

[page 49]
CHAPTER 3
Quiescence and
the New Introspection
This improved technique of introspection was of as much

importance to my study of the Inner World as is the microscope
and telescope to the study of the Outer World; it was the Columbus
that revealed, ultimately, a whole new continent of experiences.
—ELMER GATES, Early writings
The first attempts to discover better methods of discovering

and validating were thus an instinctive combination of all kinds of
naive mental activities, with the introspective more accentuated
than usual and with a more definite insight into the mind for a
solution. The two most characteristic results were judgment
training and experimental introspection.
Experimental introspection was thrust upon Gates quite early in
life, not merely by circumstances but also by predilection and
strong readings. He was often alone, completely alone. He sought
the seclusion of his amateur workshop or the restful quiet of the
woods and fields that he might uninterruptedly introspect, read, or
rest. Frequently he remained motionless in a silent and dark
woodland retreat several hours at a time, free from all outside
disturbances, to follow introspectively even the
[page 50]
most subtle changes in the states of consciousness. He was led by
long and oft-repeated experience to practice regular periods of
quiescent bodily repose to become aware more successfully of
their characteristic finer differences, and thus was almost
unintentionally led into those mental habits most conducive to
introspection, and acquired while still young a very unusual skill.
Distractions of the introspective attention had to be overcome.
He found that all bodily movements, all stimulations of the senses
(whether noticed or not), and all spontaneous mental activities
weakened the vividness, interrupted the continuity, and altered the
quality of the introspection. Objective distractions were not
difficult to over-come. The quiet of a properly regulated room
removed nearly all environmental disturbances. As a boy, he had
found the darkness, silence, and even temperature of a properly
ventilated cave better and more useful. After his eyes and ears had
become adapted, he was almost free from changes in objective

stimuli, for a constant and uniform stimulus soon becomes

unnoticed, even though it still has its effects. He found it
advantageous to practice always in the same place. The conscious
mind thereby becomes accustomed to the peculiar character of the
disturbances and finally stops noticing them. The subconscious
does not become accustomed to them, however, being disturbed by
much more minute influences.
Subjective spontaneities were not easily overcome. He
practiced long and hard and in many ways, trying to secure
freedom from such disturbances as involuntary movements; such
distractions as attention to subjective sounds in the ears and light in
the eyes, swallowing the saliva, respiration, the beating of the
heart, organic feelings in the stomach and other organs, the rush of
breath through the nostrils, the pressure on the body of clothes and
of the chair upon which he sat, smells, tastes, temperatures. Still
more distracting was the ever-recurring procession of images,
ideas, emotions, sentiments, reminiscences, passing like an endless
stream of phantoms through the mind, coming uncalled and
departing unbidden. These annoyed him most.
All his best efforts were of little avail until he took advantage
[page 51]
of the “great and important law that functional activities of the
mind and body, if systematically and regularly repeated, soon form
the habit of periodicity.” He practiced at the same time every day
without intermission. Functional periodicity of quiescence was
established as a habit at a certain hour daily, first for one kind of
spontaneity and then for another. Just as one gets hungry or sleepy
at a certain time, so he became quiescent automatically and
subconsciously at that daily hour. By voluntarily directed and
habitually enforced quiescence at a time when he was, as he
emphasized, well rested, thoroughly recuperated, well slept and
well nourished, he accomplished a quiescence of all the muscular
and sensory functions and of the organic feelings, and thus
removed, so far as possible, all disturbances of the attention so that
he might successfully detect minute shades of differences in the
mental processes that were introspected.
Muscular quiescence was accomplished by confining his
attention solely to not allowing, even once, any movement. At first
the sitting lasted fifteen, then thirty minutes daily, then one hour.
The torso was poised vertically in the chair so as not to strain the
muscles, with the arms and legs in an easy position. As this was
the main work at that time, the “one business” of his life, he took
for it the best part of the day, the noon hour, and practiced every
day with punctilious exactness. The habit soon grew so strong that
when the hour arrived he would, even if unaware of the time, feel

restful. After he had practiced about seven months, the muscles

would remain quiet of their own accord. “That restless tendency to
involuntary muscular activity which is so common to all people
when ill at case, or when first trying to stand or sit very still, had
during that daily hour entirely disappeared.”
Later in life Gates learned the psycho-physiology of this
process. Inhibitive motor memories were recorded or enregistered
in the brain, and they, like well-trained servants, subconsciously
superintended the maintenance of quiescence, so that voluntary
attention was no longer required. That area of the brain with motor
memories had been so accustomed, during his former
[page 52]
waking life, to uninterrupted and largely useless activity, that
constant bodily motions became second nature or automatic. They
were accompanied by innervations, sensations, and disturbances of
the circulation, and apart from wasting vital energy, produced a
concomitant activity in the brain and interfered with introspection.
If the introspection were to be vivid, it should be undisturbed by
any conscious state except the one it was introspecting. He noticed
that during muscular quiescence he could more vividly and
successfully introspect the sensations accompanying a muscular
movement.
Sensory quiescence was attained in the same way, the different
senses being trained one at a time. “If a light or noise is
disturbing,” he advises, “pay no attention to it and inhibit your
consciousness from dwelling on it. I can not tell you how to do
this, any more than how to move your arm, except that you do it by
trying until you succeed. You must, for instance, have a notion of
what is to be done, then intensely desire it and persistently will the
inhibition of attention, and repeat the effort until it occurs. Remain
aware, and aware that you are resting and inhibiting all mental
work. If it does not occur, stop further effort. From the moment
one is awake the sensory areas, like the leaves of the aspen tree in
the wind, are habitually without a moment’s rest, and they have
been since birth. When introspecting, the senses should be
completely quiet in the new quiescent sense, except the one being
introspected, which should alone be active.”
When the senses are thus rested, the blood supply, which
habitually congests the cortical sensory areas and nerve-endings,
diminishes and more blood and functional energy are free to be
used by the higher areas. Gates found that smaller sensory
differences could be discriminated, and the sense had certain
phases and peculiarities that he had never before been able to
notice.

Quiescence of organic feelings was also difficult. It was

necessary to be free of pain or sensations in the bodily organs that
make introspection difficult and imperfect. The organic feelings
cannot easily be inhibited when they arise, nor should they, serving
as warnings that should be heeded. By sufficient practice,
[page 53]
however, they can be inhibited, if not too intense. But the proper
way is to lead such a normal life that there will be no occasion for
organic feelings to arise. These sensations should not be
suppressed, but rather cultivated, and such a healthful life led that
no cause for them arises. Normal quiescence is impossible without
complete health.
Intellective quiescence was accomplished by the same methods
to the inhibiting of spontaneous images, concepts, ideas, thoughts,
reminiscences, and other such disturbances. Emotive quiescence
was more difficult, especially during periods of worry or social
excitement, but was accomplished with methods discovered later.
Conative quiescence was the most difficult.
Anyone who has attempted this practice of quiescence, even
only slightly, will appreciate this delightfully illuminating
description of Elmer Gates’:
“After all this had been accomplished, during a little over two
years effort, there still remained the most difficult part: to attain
automatic inhibition of the spontaneous intellective and emotive
activities. At any unexpected moment the quiescence is apt to be
disturbed by some one of the various business or social interests
knocking loudly at the front door of consciousness and ere the
awareness or the subconsciousness has had time to inhibit it, the
Attention, with insatiable curiosity, has opened wide the door and
seated the unbidden guest. To get rid of this intrusive caller is not
always easy—for he is persistent and engrossing and even when he
has been ousted he leaves his influence behind. And if you do not
answer the knock you are apt to feel that perhaps it is something
important and ought to be attended to.
“The plans and duties and opportunities of the day, if they are
not permitted to approach the front door, will shout in at the
windows or calmly sit on the front steps and wait until you come
out—and you know they are there, like a conscience, impatiently
awaiting their opportunity. When you think you have effectually
barricaded yourself against all these disturbances so the
spontaneities of the intellect have either concluded to stay away or
the attention no longer notices them, and you are about

[page 54]
to congratulate yourself on your commendable ability to be ruler in
your inner realm and crown yourself King of your own mind, then
there suddenly steals into your consciousness the seductive light of
some great love whose insuppressible radiance finds no barrier in
closed eyelids or in automatic inhibition of muscular and
intellective states, and, ere you are aware, your breath comes
quicker and your heart beats faster and the arena where you were
about to introspect a voluntarily produced mental state is bathed in
a luminescent glory that blots out everything else. Or, when you
think that in the empire of your mind you are about to become
Monarch of all you survey, then it is that the sky is sometimes
almost instantly overcast with the oppressive gloom of some great
grief whose black clouds blot out the very stars of hope and
thunder out reverberations of woe that will seemingly forever echo
in your soul. And sometimes again the recollection of some
amusing incident or some sudden gust of resentment will ripple
with incipient laughter or momentary anger the smooth sea whose
surface is your only mirror in which to reflect the heavens above.
The appetites and desires are easily kept quiescent by a normal life,
and they are not apt to intrude uninvited.”
Change of environment to get into a wholly new set of
influences and stimuli he found a necessary last step in preparation
for successful introspection: otherwise certain peculiar conditions
and influences of the habitual surroundings would be mistaken for
normal and essential characteristics of his consciousness.
Suggestions of the social atmosphere and local objective forces
were mistaken for permanent mental states.
In this practice of quiescence Gates had none of the so-called
occult reasons, such as “entering the mystic silence,” but did it to
remove so far as possible all psycho-physical and physical
obstacles and distractions to the best introspective working of his
mind. “The virtue,” he noted, “does not lie in simply getting quiet,
but depends wholly on what the mind does when it gets so good a
chance.” The quiescence-training that gave a habit of inhibiting
muscular spontaneities produced physiologic rest, while
[page 55]
training of the intellective, emotive, and conative spontaneities
produced psychologic quiescence. The term quiescence was used
to distinguish it from ordinary rest, and was defined at that time as
“the art of attaining functional equalization, rest, metabolic
recuperation, and the art of inhibiting useless spontaneities.” Later
his researches on the volitional factor of conation and the
conscious factor of volition taught him “how to teach quiescence to
involve no mystical elements.” But this erroneous interpretation

was always a concern of students. One student, Henry C.

Houghton, M.D., professor of physiology and otology, New York
Medical College, who had spent some time in Gates’ laboratories
at Chevy Chase, wrote to him as late as 1899:
“There is a large and increasing class of minds who will

hail your book with glad words, will feed on it and find relief
from starvation.... I can see that quiescence will be viewed in
different ways; but it is so strong on the physical side, so like
Delsarts in some shade, so in the line of ‘Menti-culture,’ and so
true, that I can not see how it can be left out; but the danger of
being classed with the ‘Eastern fakirs’ is so evident that you
need to guard the practice by reasons of scientific sort.”
The description of quiescence herein follows Gates’ latest

explanation. One aspect he expressed quite vividly in this way:
“The inhibition of all useless voluntary and involuntary
muscular and sensory activities—of purposeless intellections and
impulses—soon became by force of periodicity, easy and more and
more complete. Useless twitchings, rumblings, muscular and
mental strains, brooding, worries, desires, imagings, were stopped.
Evil and depressing emotional states were suppressed, and the
pleasant ones correspondingly increased. The light of awareness
was kept brightly burning, but the flickering flames of useless
conscious states were turned down ever lower and lower until even
the purposive processes were quiescent. If completely successful,
the body feels like a statue inhabited, not by special
[page 56]
senses and feelings, but by a pervading body-feeling (somatosis);
the whole cerebral cortex (which is anatomically connected with
all parts of the body) sends libero-motor and metabolic and
circulatory and other nervous influences to all parts of the body at
once, thus equalizing the vaso-motor irregularities of the blood
circulation due to one-sided activities and specialized habits of
work. The areas of the brain and body that have day by day been
accustomed to prolonged activity, and which during night have
been the center for dreams, have thus become permanently over
congested with blood, but during this quiescence have a chance to
rest and recuperate because the blood is withdrawn and spread
throughout the whole body almost uniformly. In ordinary life at all
times certain organs, or motor areas, or intellective or emotive
areas, are habitually (by reason of the vocation or trade of the
person) hyperemic and their states dominant in consciousness, and
other unused structures are anemic; i.e., there is an unequal
distribution of functional activity in the organism, and this leads to

an atrophic disuse of some structures and a hypertrophic growth of

others, which when long persisted in produces disease. But
quiescence relieves the irregularity and permits rest and
recuperation. During the quiescence there occurs a metabolic
manufacture of vital energy that otherwise would not have been
made; and this energy is distributed more uniformly over the body,
and the surplus is stored for future use. Only during complete rest
does this take place in the cells of the body. Few people ever rest
completely. They may spend enough time doing nothing, but they
do not properly rest.
“This practice soon forms a habit of making bodily motions
and mental activities only when there is a purpose. The period of
quiescence forms a habit that gradually extends in its influence
beyond that hour and relieves the mind of its multitudinous,
harmful, spontaneous agitations. It conduces to continuous and
regulated mental functioning. In many ways it secures anatomic
and psychologic growth, removes wrong habits, forms correct
bodily positions, relieves abnormal muscular and mental tensions
and nervousness and wrong vaso-motor dominancies. It allows
[page 57]
an opportunity for the action of those subtler and more uniform
influences belonging to the inherent or immanent nature of the
mind and promotes the functional growth according to the needs of
the mind’s activity undeterred by abnormal or unduly accentuated
habits. It allows the normal nervous stimuli regulating growth to
act equally upon all structures and functional activities. The
special memories of some trade or profession and the special
cortical dominancies belonging to particular occupations, no longer
so completely determine and monopolize the course of cerebral
growth, but the whole nature of the mind begins to act upon the
whole organism in which it is embodied.”
Gates noticed that he was gradually becoming healthier, and
his consciousness becoming more vivid and clear. His health was
largely due to regular habits of eating, sleeping, and working, and
to the congeniality of his occupation, but it was nevertheless
profoundly influenced by the perfectly rested condition in which
his mind kept itself. The high state of health in turn augmented
intensity of consciousness, power of attention, depth of emotion,
and energy of will.
He worked hard every day—often for several months he kept at
hard physical labor—but he made it a point that if his mind felt
fatigue from, for instance, seven hours’ work, he would rest; and
next day he could perhaps labor seven and a half hours before
feeling fatigue. By gradually increasing the severity and length of
the daily task, he found that he could often labor fifteen hours

without feeling fatigue. As a rule his mind secured for itself sound
and dreamless sleep, was well rested, kept its body properly clad
and well nourished; nevertheless, its highest exuberance of health
and most vivid consciousness was experienced only after it had for
several months regularly practiced that more perfect and equable
kind of energy-creating rest that he technically termed quiescence.
Introspective experimentation with his conscious states by
making them act upon each other-this study of subjective states
acting on subjective states, of what hindered or promoted new
ideas—soon led to so regulating his life that he would
[page 58]
always have plenty of surplus vital energy, beyond that required
for ordinary activities, for the very best mentative results. He
found that by practicing quiescence regularly at the same hour
daily and then devoting the remainder of the day to intellective
work, this systematic tendency soon became habitual, and the
organism expected and prepared for it. A daily mentative
periodicity and a higher mental capacity were produced shortly
afterward. The other functions being quiet, it became the mind’s
habit to be more fully awake and aware. Sleep is apt to be
disturbed by dreams; and anyway he found it did not produce the
kind of intellective rest that quiescence did. Not only was the
power of introspection slowly augmented, but a more effective
intellective dominancy was established during the remainder of the
day; the higher mental processes tended to become dominant over
the lower. All related psychological and physiological
functionings were augmented, he learned, with increased
respiration, circulation, and metabolism; and the subconscious
processes gave evidence of readiness. All dominancies of
consciousness and of vasomotor blood supply connected with other
kinds of functioning subsided, and the whole mind and body were
given over completely to the support of that process which habit
said must occur at that periodicity. The result was an
augmentation of every phase of that activity. There was no
physiological inertia, but a readiness.
In a similar manner the mind got ready for its introspective
practice after each period of quiescence, constituting not merely a
periodicity of quiescence but also a periodicity of introspection.
These periodicities favored the acquisition of automatic skill.
A functional habit could thereafter be more quickly and completely
established. He found abundant proof in many ways; for instance,
if a musical periodicity had been once formed for a certain hour, it
was not easy to do mathematical work during that period.
Moreover, for some time after practice had been abandoned, new

musical or mathematical ideas would occur oftener during their

former periods.
Gates could not vividly introspect an active mental state
[page 59]
when there was any slight degree of fatigue of the activity
producing it; or when there was general fatigue; or when conative
strains were simultaneously in the mind. Regarding this last
difficulty, he found that all kinds of consciously-noticed and
subconsciously-felt organic, muscular, or sensory stimuli produced
a sort of glowing or hazy foreground semi-consciousness through
which the introspected state had to be “seen”; that the habitual
daily mental activities produced a sort of glowing background
against which the state could not be distinctly introspected. In
addition, the mind would frequently be engaged upon a mental
process, as yet partly or wholly subconscious, which in a few hours
or days would result in some new idea, insight, or bit of creative
work, or some new emotive craving or leading; that is, the mind
was parturient with some new conception and about to give birth to
some new step in its growth. This produced a brain-strain and a
sort of fore glow in consciousness that was apt to be mistaken for a
quality of the state introspected. On the other hand, a mental
activity that had just stopped a few hours or days ago, especially if
of great interest or intensity, left an afterglow in consciousness that
tinted with its own hues every introspective scene.
It was not easy to overcome these hindrances. “There were,”
Gates pointed out, “no guidebooks to follow, no Baedeker of the
introspective world. No precedents had been established, no
guideposts set up by predecessors. I was entering alone into a new
region, wholly unaware of the kinds of dangers or opportunities. I
had to learn by doing it. I had to do it first and find out how
afterwards. After many successive expedients, I finally found that
to get a clear arena, unencumbered with uninvited guests—so the
invited mental states might come out, like gladiators one or two at
a time, and perform for my introspection—it was necessary to
attain what I called psychological and physiological quiescence.
“It is not a fad,” he emphasized, “not ‘sitting in the silence for
concentration.’ It is serious work for earnest students. The
novelty will soon wear off, unless indeed it is kept up until the real
[page 60]
novelties of originative mentation commence; and then the
wonders of the Arabian Nights sink into insignificance as
compared with the new world of your own mind which is by far
more marvelous than the Seven Wonders of the objective world. A
world in which you alone can enter, and only by means of your

own consciousness manifesting introspectively. You will be well

repaid for the trouble if you succeed, and in that empire you will
find all the possibilities of your nature. Nothing can ever come to
you except it come to your consciousness. But first you must still
the Babel of spontaneities before you can truly hear; you must
subdue the flickering and the confused glimmering before you can
see; you must control your functionings and suppress the anarchy
of your spontaneities before you can become King of your own
subjective domain. And to rule yourself (that is, to rule your
Person by your Self), is greater than to rule the world.”
A whole new world of subjective states was revealed. When
the mind’s customary activities have subsided, spontaneities have
been temporarily suppressed, and the introspected processes and
states have become more vivid, then it is that the less usual and
more fundamental and seldom noticed states become more distinct
and can be better introspected.
Gates offered this word of caution: no abnormal pupil should
attempt to practice quiescence. No one should attempt it who is
not well grounded in objective science and the scientific methods
of physical and psychological research; nor without being under
the supervision of a competent medical man who is also a
psychologist, for most persons are unfitted by nature for this line of
research. Only those fitted to become specialists should try.
Gates had discovered an important new method and technique,
which he called the New Introspection, destined to be of utmost
practical value to all his further work. One of the ways in which
his study of introspection differed from that of his predecessors
was that he first prepared by attaining the habit of quiescence.
Another was his study of the effects of bodily conditions and
environment and their practical regulation.

[page 61]
CHAPTER 4
Bodily and
Environmental Conditions
So did the mind of a certain man and his body and his whole
animate and inanimate environment discover the Mind-art; every
science was ransacked for help towards the more skillful and
effectual ways of using the mental faculties and regulating the
body and environment. —ELMER GATES
The daily practice of quiescent introspection and original

mentation led Elmer Gates to notice the effects of sudden and
marked changes in the physical condition of his body and
environment by corresponding changes in the introspective and
originative results. The body is a mind organism; all its structural
peculiarities and physical processes are as they are because they
form a mechanism for the embodiment of mind. Every defect in
the mechanical completeness, functional working, nourishment, or
elimination at once disarranges the mind. Of this there was found
abundant and convincing proof. Anatomical and physical
normality, normal position of bodily parts and attitudes, freedom
from disease, injuries, abnormalities, and faulty metabolism, were
found essential to successful mentation. Insufficient
[page 62]
rest produced fatigue, which is wholly unfavorable and, he
observed, is a mental state pure and simple: the mind, not the body,
can get tired. Pain as a mental state distracts the attention, but its
bodily effect is more hindering, as is also lack of nourishment.
Experiment proved that underfeeding or prolonged restriction to
one article of diet was a handicap; good mentation required
thorough but not excessive nourishment.
Gates was eager to know if objective conditions could actually
influence his mental processes despite his efforts to the contrary.
By objective conditions he meant everything except the conscious
and subconscious mind. “The environment of any object,” in his
words, “is all of the universe except itself. The Cosmos consists of
any one thing plus all other things. Other than you and your
environment there is nothing else. In one sense it is convenient to
think of the anatomical organism of a living creature as part of its
mind’s environment. To this the mind sustains a most close and
causal relation, but not more close than is the relation of the whole
living organism (body and mind) to its environment. They are

composed of the same kinds of substances and energy; both are

subject to the same physical, chemical, biological, and
mathematical laws; there is mind in the creature and there is mind
of the same kind in that which is outside; in its environment the
creature, in the most literal sense, not only lives and moves but
also has its being. Your being is not exclusively in yourself, but to
an even greater extent is in the Cosmos of which you are a portion.
Every second of conscious life is for still other reasons dependent
on the momentary intactness of your connection with your
environment.”
Environmental conditions affect the quantity and quality of
mentative work of the creative or acquisitive kind to such a degree
that anyone regularly and systematically devoted to any line of
work can easily notice it. There are many conditions other than the
common ones that modify mental processes, and even though by
natural effort some can be partially overcome, it takes energy.
Gates made a preliminary study of each condition
[page 63]
of environment that undergoes daily or seasonal variation; also the
effects of localities, altitudes, geographical features (prairies,
deserts, woods, mountains, oceans). The method consisted in
making a full record of bodily and environmental conditions
during which his mind actually ascertained and discovered new
knowledge and did original and creative work. There were those
who claimed such a high degree of occult powers and personal
attainments as to be free from the effect of their surroundings, but
psycho-physical measurements and experimental evidence
obtained by his study of some of these claimants did not warrant
such assumptions.
A laboratory study of artificially regulated environmental
conditions disclosed to Gates the intimate nature of his connection
with the environment. The first requisite was an environment that
could be uniformly maintained and regulated so that one factor at a
time could be varied. It was for this reason that he built the
Insulated Isolation Chamber. He found that there was an optimum
value of any factor for the best mentative work; fatigue set in
sooner at other values. Such factors as temperature, barometric
pressure, humidity, oxygen content of the air, electrostatic
potential, minute amounts of carbon dioxide or other gases or
vapors or smells, illumination, and noise level were studied.
Frequent fluctuation of any one wasted vital energy.
His methods of determining fatigue were such as the following:
The arm lifted a given weight to a given height at a certain rate,
keeping time with a pendulum; or the mind passed understandingly
through consciousness the propositions and corollaries of plane

and solid and spherical geometry at a given number per hour,

previously regulated by trials. These or similar kinds of motor or
mental work were continued until fatigue commenced. After an
average was obtained for a uniform environment that was as nearly
normal as he could make it, one factor was then varied as the same
tasks, were repeated, and the effect noted on the fatigue point and
other bodily and mental conditions, including quantity of work,
time required for
[page 64]
recuperation, effect on excretions. Mentation, he found, was not
only merely relieved of hindrances, but also was actually promoted
and augmented by proper environmental conditions.
Having arrived at these conclusions, he made another
investigation, repeating his experiments and adding new ones. He
more carefully and minutely observed changes in his introspection
of each mental function and state when there were sudden changes
in his body, such as from ample sleep to great loss of sleep, rest to
fatigue, recumbent to standing position, muscular relaxation to
severe strain, different attitudes and gestures, fasting to full
nourishment and to a limited diet; also the effect of changes in
environment, as from great cold to warmth, humidity to dryness,
high to low altitudes, stillness to great noise.
Every sufficiently sudden change produced marked changes in
his introspective states. He could with some certainty predict what
modification in qualities, intensities, products, and speeds of
conscious processes resulted from given changes, and this led to an
experimental study of the introspectively observable effects of
artificially produced changes. He was led to believe, what he was
later able to prove, that all the slower and smaller changes in body
and environment also produced changes in his mental states and
processes, but that these effects were too gradual or faint to be
noticed except in their cumulative action. This led him to make a
more definite quantitive study of conditions that produced
introspective effects.
He noticed that during certain days and hours he could perform
intellectual labors more easily and do better and more original
work than during other hours. To determine to what extent this
was caused by changes in body and environment, he measured and
recorded many changes (some of which were given later on in
lectures and reported in the press), not only in the environment but
in the body, as diet, breathing, perspiration, and chemical
composition of excretions and secretions. He paid particular
attention to times when he had new ideas and was otherwise
mentally above par, and found that generally they corresponded
with definite conditions of body and environment.

[page 65]
Only generally was this true, however: he later discovered that
these apparent exceptions existed because proper introspective
attention (the “dirigation” of Chapter 7) more than compensated
for unfavorable conditions; but it required a much greater
expenditure of energy.
He made quite a specialty of this line of research on the
originative and creative capacities—another outlet for that
“lightning activity” which astonished his uncle. He would select
some subject in the sciences or arts and apply his mind to it
exclusively for several weeks or months, keeping a minutely
accurate record of times and character of every noticeable change.
At regular daily periods he would introspect his mental content of
that subject, considering each fact in relation to every other in the
same and other subjects, trying to invent by considering defects of
existing methods and apparatus, turning the problem over to the
subconscious, trying it in various bodily and environmental
conditions, and by every conceivable introspective conscious and
subconscious method; and when failure or success took place he
made a complete record of conditions.
In his investigations Gates inevitably noticed time lost by
interruptions. Assistants tabulated for several months the time lost
from his daily work by all interruptions, by a given and gradually
increasing number of prearranged ones, and the work done when
there were no interruptions. A sufficient number decreased the
work output to almost nothing, the output increasing as the
interruptions decreased. Another loss of time was in doing things
just as well done by an assistant.
Observations upon himself and many others revealed to his
surprise that it was not unusual for interruptions to waste a half to
two hours daily-estimated as 180-730 hours annually, or 36-146
working days of five hours. In an active life of 50 years, this loss
of 5-20 years could be enough to change a lifework from great
success to partial success or even to failure.
The mental working day was estimated at five hours because
numerous observations upon himself and many others showed that
the mind could not do continuously, month to month,
[page 66]
first-class productive, originative, or creative work for much
longer, and then only when health and strength were at their
highest and no energy was used for other kinds of work. One
could indeed keep busy ten to sixteen hours daily at any routine
drudgery, but the mind was no longer at its best after the first three
to six hours.

More serious than quantity was the loss in quality. It was only
by continuity of attention for several hours that the highest degree
of daily functional efficiency was attained. Momentary attention
to other matters set up activities in other parts of the brain, and
there was not that cumulatively increasing attentional stimulation
of cerebration that occurred with no distractions. About these facts
his experiments left no doubt at all. Distractions lowered the
functional excitement, or “frenzy,” of the creative imagination and
upset the “spell,” or “ecstasy,” that after a short while tended to
new insights and ideas. Distraction is so serious to creative mental
activity that the mind instinctively becomes so absorbed in its
subject and absent-minded about everything else that it does not
notice ordinary disturbances.
No feature of the mind’s functioning so impressed Gates with
its practical importance as that the mind had to get worked up to a
certain enthusiasm and alertness where abilities were highest. It
took time and great effort and strong incentive to bring about this
“Mentative maximum”; it used energy, and rest and recuperation
must follow before trying again. He could not, for instance,
without great effort get the mind thus worked up more than once a
day, and even with the very greatest effort it could not be done
with equal success every day. Generally several days’ rest was
required. By systematic practice, however, a comparatively
uniform series of results could be attained, provided the attention
was not disturbed.
The attention could be kept in efficient operation only a few
hours at a time. During the five hours’ daily mental work there
was only a short period of maximum activity under the strongest
and brightest limelight of attention, perhaps ten to forty minutes.
This short period was the culminating opportunity of that day’s
[page 67]
work. Many experiments upon himself and others convincingly
substantiated this conclusion. This experiment was also made
upon persons kept in ignorance that the disturbances were made
one day and not another, thus eliminating suggestion, and it was
made in an environment that was uniform day after day.
If this highest mental maximum was not reached, then the most
evanescent and higher generalizations, the more subtle distinctions
and more beautiful conceptions, were not attained, but instead a
lesser series of results to start the next day’s work. “Ofttimes an
idea is born with difficulty,” Gates wrote; “it evades us time and
again until finally, dimly and for a brief period, we realize that the
insight is about to enter consciousness. It may not—and often does
not—and may even remain unknown that day or that generation.”
It is well established, he continued, that in any process of

physiological or psychological deterioration it is the very highest

faculties that first disappear; those mental capacities that have been
attained last in the course of evolution are first to be destroyed
when a degenerative process sets in. Now, fatigue is such a
process, and everything that prevents continuity of attention is a
retrogression, and the very highest faculties are first affected.
In one sense Gates considered a person a mentating organism,
or mind-machine, whose output in ideas or creative work can be
augmented 10 to 40 percent. In a whole lifetime there are
comparatively few years when this machine is at its best; so its
working time should be economized. In early life, or when
engaging in a new work, the mind has naturally a shorter daily
period of effective mentation, but as one grows older or becomes
inured to a given work, the mind is capable of longer hours and
should gradually be accustomed to them. From his observations a
man is fortunate if the exigencies and changes of an active life
permit twenty, to say nothing of fifty, years’ continuous
application to mental work. Ordinarily, he found, two or three
periods of one to four years each were accomplished—not quite
enough for complete preparation and adequate skill. A greater
number of persons, he believed, for the world’s sake should take
up lines
[page 68]
of research and give their lives to them, and should value their time
too much to allow it to be wasted by such hindrances so easily
avoided.
From his point of view the place in which Gates worked (he
once named it the phrontisterion!— Greek for “think-shop”) was
not merely the small space within his laboratory walls or studio, it
was unlimited space filled with worlds; the Cosmos itself was his
think-shop. Although he could not change the Cosmos, he could
make himself more freely subject to its influences.
His personal attitude toward his environment was a much
closer relation than even his studies indicated. “When I once fully
realized,” he expressed it, “the causal and functional relation
between my body and environment, and between my mind and
environment, saw that this relation is both immanent and
corporeal, and that my environment was much more than my
immediate surroundings, I was profoundly impressed—my
emotional exaltation was almost unbearable. When I realized that
the vast objective Cosmos and the equally vast immanent forces
(animate and inanimate) were all parts of a whole by means of
which my mind was functioning, I was over-whelmed with my
littleness and elated with the greatness as being part of that Whole,
with the power to use it and be used by it! It was during these

moments that I most clearly saw that only by and through mind
could I know anything and take advantage of these relationships.
All this existential Cosmos would be an insensate, dead, and un-
meaning thing but for mind. Therefore the study of mind and
especially of those processes by which new truth is discovered, has
been taken up with an increased interest and enthusiasm that
cannot be described, ‘determined to cease not till I die,’ and
fervently hoping that I might never die so I might continue my
studies into the Beyond.”
The three factors are interrelated in a vital way. The body
would not be a living body except for the mind; the mind would
not function but for its body; and neither could exist even for an
instant without the environment-the body would not grow, the
mind could not get memories. There is no machine
[page 69]
so closely interactional as this body-mind machine. “Think of it!”
he exclaimed . “Not only do these three factors constitute a
mechanism in the fullest sense, but the environment enters
shapingly into the mind by furnishing its sensations, images,
concepts, and ideas of objects, and the mind reacts upon its
environment, modifying it. The mind is intrinsic in the living
body, constituting its life and building it. These three factors
mutually influence each other—not merely a mechanism but a
living mechanism—a mind-mechanism; a self-active, mind-
making mechanism which is guided by the mind it makes, and in
turn the mind organizes the mechanism.”
“It would not be a true psychologic account of this period,” he
wrote, “without saying that this was a time of almost constant
yearning or ‘desire-prayer’ for enlightenment—an asking of the
Whole for illumination; a wondering why I could remain in
ignorance of the real nature of mind when Mind is in the universe!
Hour by hour I held in my mind the feeling that inasmuch as there
is that in the Cosmos which is conscious, why cannot my
consciousness get in touch with it? In a dim way I began to look
upon Consciousness as the very inmost secret of the mind and of
all life, and as the most significant factor of Existence. I did not
clearly state or think this but felt it all the more intensely. I
distinctly was aware of all that other Consciousness in the Cosmos
and seemed to feel it, although I well knew it might be an illusion
or misinterpretation—but of my awareness of it there is no doubt.
I conceived the universe as being the infinite body of an infinite
mind-activity, the key to which is Consciousness, and therefore I
believed that a knowledge of the laws of conscious mind would be
the most important attainment possible. To this consciousness-
activity in the Cosmos, conceived as a cosmic and immanent

activity, I yearned my daily and hourly desire-prayers for

enlightenment.”
That perhaps he lacked enough ability to accomplish his
ambitious purposes was sometimes a discouraging thought, but he
hoped the art of mentation would make up for any deficiencies. So
eager to possess ability, like some of the great discoverers, he
[page 70]
resolved at least to do nothing to weaken his health. This led him
to put into practice the results of his experiments; and to further
that end he studied physiology and hygiene, and took up the study
of medicine under a preceptor, with elective courses in college.
This study of his relation to his environment exerted a deep
influence upon subsequent investigations. He realized that for the
best results in the study of the sciences and arts he must not lose
sight that the mind is not independent of the body, environment,
moods, idiosyncrasies, habits, morals, evolutionary degree of
growth, and other influences. Proper adjustment must be
maintained between body, mind, and environment. “The mind
responds to changes in environment and is therefore functionally
part of it; changing conditions are as cosmic as metabolism or
chemicals. The mind cannot be understood as an activity
independent of the Cosmos. This strange view of the isolated
independence of the mind functions has dominated all thought of
the world,” he emphasized.
Gates marveled that a human mind could proceed into the
unknown, explore it, and make ever greater and greater parts
become known. “How is it possible that a human mind shall come
to know what no other human mind can tell it, what no book has
recorded, what no language has expressed, what no mind has
conceived?” he pondered. “How can it wrest a new idea out of the
Unknown? Now came into Newton’s mind the idea of gravity and
the calculus? into Spencer’s, Darwin’s, Haekkel’s, and Wallace’s
that of natural selection and survival of the fittest? Although I did
not then dearly understand my own conception or insight into the
mystery, I had a slowly forming conviction that the MIND which I
called my own is in reality but a functional portion of a universal
process, part of a cosmical activity—a little twig on the great tree
of life; and that inheriting its nature and responding to its
influences, my mind is a practical portion of a Universe-process, is
a vortex in the Infinite Sea of Consciousness; and in discovering
the new truth I am but taking advantage of my interactional,
organic connection with the

[page 71]
mentative process of the Cosmos. Not in any mystical or
supernatural manner but in a way just as natural as when I utilize
the waterfall to turn the mill, or the sunlight to aid in growing
crops.
“There is in the Universe, THAT Out of which my
consciousness comes and by which it acts; there is THAT which if
it were not, my consciousness could not be. I know not what
THAT is—but my consciousness is dependent on it . . . is part of
it—and it is THAT which constitutes those mental processes by
which truth is discovered,” is what he wrote at that time.
Later and much more extensive experience in making
discoveries and inventions fully demonstrated the correctness of
his early insight that new ideas are the result, not of supernatural or
mystical agencies but “of the natural processes of consciousness
and powers of the mind as experienced in the mind in functional
interaction with Cosmos.”
This study of environment naturally led him into an awareness
of functional periodicities. Some of the main results of his study
of them, which he put into practice to the best of his ability, are
summarized perhaps in his general view: “No one physical aspect
of nature is more noteworthy than the recurrent periodical or
rhythmical character of its phenomena and this is probably true
throughout the whole domain of Cosmos from its largest
macrocosmic groups of sidereal systems down to its smallest
infinitesimals; from movements that recur every billions of years
to those that take place billions of times per second; from the
recurrent ages-long geologic periods to the annual seasons, to night
and day, to the rhythm of respiration, heartbeats, and light waves.
Within this vast domain of infinite room there occurs forever the
great Drama of The Cosmic Process whose separate acts and
scenes are marked off by larger and smaller periodicities. Herein
the universe undergoes its perpetual transformations and
redistributions of matter, motion, and mind. This limitless ROOM
is the home, the dwelling place, of boundless Totality; within this
Space there are aggregated all Things into one reciprocally
functioning Cosmic Whole; they are all
[page 72]
composed of the same fundamental matter and motion and mind;
materially, dynamically, and psychologically they are alike; they
are tied together by various forces and interactions and
functionally connected so that no one Thing is independent of all
other Things but are inextricably related and interdependent,
making ONE, FUNCTIONAL WHOLE, whose rhythmical
interactions are functional periodicities. Within the larger Whole

is our solar system with our Earth keeping step in the rhythmic
Goings-on, and on Earth is the evolving Organic Life. Our earth
has had its succession of geologic ages with their alternate periods;
and in any age its seasonal alternation of winter and summer, its
daily alternations of day and night and tides; and so on in a
hundred ways, each species of thing and each thing functions
rhythmically, keeping its time and place with other things in that
same system.”
The human organism has its growth periods, with ontogenetic
lines of functional development and in each line a sequence of
functional crises. There are periodic, or rhythmical, sequences of
functions and periodicities in all organic life, and if some are
known others can be determined. To conform to them is to be
doing that which nature is doing at the same time, thereby having
the Cosmos for a partner and guide. When periodicities occur in
any organ or person or world, then is the time for that kind of
functioning easily and naturally, because that kind is then and there
the trend of events for that thing and for the Cosmos of which it is
a functional part. To determine the times of the beginnings of
natural functional periodicities and conform to them is to float
upon the cosmic tides and not battle uselessly against them.
Particular kinds of bodily and mental work should be performed at
certain ontogenetic periods and seasons, so as to take advantage of
the great physiologic, physical, and psychologic tendencies of
these periodicities.
When a function or faculty first becomes ontogenetically
active, then, as pedagogy teaches, is when it should first be trained.
When some other faculty begins its periodicity, all other matters
should be temporarily dropped and the new functioning
[page 73]
given opportunity for uninterruptedly starting its development and
growth, Gates’ experiments showed. To attempt to train or use an
activity before the time of its functioning is time worse than
wasted; to wait until after the period of activity is just as wasteful.
In forming habits of work one should conform to the ontogenetic
life periods when that kind of work is due, and it should not be
skipped. The work should of course relate to one’s predilections
and genius-capacities.
A knowledge of periodicities enables a prognosis to be made,
and Gates’ studies suggested an art of prognosis. Briefly stated,
from any one series of changes within a known normal organism
all other series of changes can be foreknown. It is a natural
province of science to predict or forecast events. The astronomer
predicts for hundreds of years with incomparable accuracy; the
farmer predicts that spring will come again; the dog, that if it

whines properly its master will open the door. The majority of
intelligent actions of living creatures are based on prediction. If
we know the orderly sequence of periodicities, both in the
organism and in its environment, and have the chronological date
at which the organism starts its life, certain computations can be
made with reasonable accuracy and its important crises predicted.
If the laws of physics are known, many thousands of predictions
can be made for certain circumstances; for instance, if metal is
heated it will expand. If the laws of physiology and psychology
are known, predictions under many conditions can be made. To
know is to foretell. Prognosis is not divination or prophecy; we
foretell that the sun will rise tomorrow.
A functional line of development may be accelerated, retarded,
or modified. Mind and truth enable us to foreknow. Prognosis is
foreseeing future conditions. All adaptations of acts to ends, all
voluntary actions, therefore, are based on prognosis. Whatever is
to occur to-morrow exists in the makeup and functional structure
of the present. There are not only these lines of development of
each functional activity within an organism but also the relations of
lines of activity to sequences in the world of which it is a part.
Man is a unit in a Cosmic Whole, but more
[page 74]
directly a component of earth and subject to its periodicities. “A
functional line of development may be modified by education,
social influences, beliefs and affiliations, occupations, and by
hypnotic suggestion. All false teaching—all wrong emotions, all
immoral conduct—pervert the normal sequences of development
and make them lack conformity to the cosmic order of sequences.
Truth alone leads to conformity to the Universe. In the end, truth
is always the best guide, and justice the best policy.”
Evolution takes place by different methods whereby the
organism and the environment become mutually adapted through
two initiating causes: physical reaction on the organism and mind,
and mental reaction on the organism and environment. For a given
development there is a special course through which the organism
must pass and which no other influence can change. All things are
functionally related to the whole and are cooperatively connected;
therefore, to change any set of motions in nature is, sooner or later,
to effect changes in everything. A growth, whether a crystal, a
plant, or a reputation, is the outcome of multitudinous influences
(each of which is the sum of many smaller good influences).
Success is a function of the organism, locality, time, and other
factors. A person, being a functional part of the larger organism,
and of the social life around him, may occasionally become

conscious of the trend of events—a condition of prevision, or

perhaps intuition.

[page 75]
CHAPTER 5
The First Period:
Awakening to Predilections
It is no more wonderful that a boy of eight to fourteen should

become as deeply interested in the inner world of his own mind
than another boy in the outer world of his surroundings-in the
making of judgments than in the working of a steam engine.
—ELMER GATES
The evolution of the Mind Art was a gradual growth of the

mind, with one step naturally leading to another. All later work
was based on these early insights and experiments and discoveries.
Certain well-demarcated periods in his lifework seemed to Gates’
later analysis to be steps in this development. The first period,
from his eighth to fourteenth year, which he called his Six Years’
Work, marked the awakening to his predilections. This part of his
youthful scientific career covered the progress already described,
and contained a few glimpses of subsequent steps.
Of his account in Volume I of this first period, from the
vantage point of maturity he wrote in 1911: “Of course I have used
a nomenclature developed during a later period and have
undoubtedly read into it some of the meanings and insights and
[page 76]
experiences of later periods, although I have tried not to—
meanings which were indeed implied in my earlier and dimmer
insights; but which I then could not have stated as now. On the
other hand I am equally satisfied that there were meanings implied
which I am not yet able to grasp, and from which my later
interpretations have sidetracked me. I know this to be true because
my most recent researches have led back to some of the abandoned
conceptions of long ago. I was influenced by a very definite
predilective exaltation during this first period, one that has been
equaled only twice since.”
Another view of this formative period may be gained from the
following letters written by Gates when he was a few years older,
in his sixteenth and seventeenth years, when “I first discovered the
Mind-Art and taught it to my teachers,” as he later recollected.
From a circular letter written in 1875 (age 16) from the
Centennial Exposition, to his microscopy and bacteriology teacher,
Professor Miller, and his chemistry teachers, Dr. Armstrong and
Professor Marschall:

“It does not follow that because the mind has evolved to a
sufficient exactness in its knowledge of its environment to enable it
to survive that the knowledge is really true but only sufficiently
true to enable it to survive, and that it really may not be true as
known. The mind may, for all it knows, not be sane but only sane
enough not to become extinct. For ages man believed that the sun
rises in the east and revolved daily around the earth, and yet that
mistaken notion was sufficiently true for the world to live by at
that time, but not to lead to the further knowledge required by
modem man and his astronomers. For a time that false knowledge
became a hindrance to progress; and there are numerous other
examples. How do we know, after considering the hundreds of
utterly mistaken ideas that have led the world, and remembering its
wars and cruelties and all the horrors of the past, but that the mind
is incapable of getting true knowledge and is insane? In some way
the mind has to prove itself sane before we can implicitly trust to
its conclusions, and it has
[page 77]
to find in itself (and nowhere else) the credentials of its sanity.
This is one of the greatest of the problems that confronts the world
and it is Mind that must solve that problem about itself.
“I have dim insights which give me hope that the mind may
solve it, and see it is not a problem of logic but a much deeper and
prelogical one. I see also that I must continue my experiments on
animals until I find if the mind-activity can create structural
changes in the brain. I must feel sure on this point before I can
continue my original thinking . . . that will settle many questions.”
The next year, after returning from the Exposition at
Philadelphia, he wrote to Major Powell:
“Your questions go to the heart of the matter; scientific method
is not yet out of its swaddling clothes, and is being brought up on
the bottle and by incompetent nurses. I see that it is capable not
only of being greatly systematized and improved but
revolutionized and extended into new kinds of scientific method—
a work which I have already commenced by applying the present
crude methods to the laboratory study of scientific method (in
which I am, I believe, the first specialist) and then propose to apply
my improved and extended scientific method to the further study
of scientific method ... and I suppose I shall keep on doing that all
my life. While I do not need such splendid encouragement as you
have given me I assure you I greatly appreciate it, adding
enthusiasm to my very strenuous labors. Out of this improved
scientific method I am developing an art of scientific method and
the application to research has inaugurated a new method of
research and of education into whose care and guidance I would

like to leave the world. Is that audacious and ambitious and

courageous enough to suit you? I have just re-turned from the
Centennial Exposition, as you know, where I saw the ‘Modern
Wonders of the World,’ from Bell’s telephone—which is not
considered a wonder—up to the great steamship ‘with a compass
like a conscience’; and I said to myself that the next semi-
centennial, if my plans get started in time, will comprise as part of
the exposition my proposed demonstrative
[page 78]
exhibit of the New Science Teaching and New Method of
Research, by which Mind, the greatest force in the world, will have
been harnessed just as we have already harnessed electricity.
“This study of that kind of mental method which constitutes
scientific method must be based on a study of successful mental
activity. The really instructive way to study birds and animals and
butterflies is not to kill them and fill museum shelves with dead
creatures but to study them when alive and doing the main things
that constitute, for them, according to their degree and special
evolution, successful living. The same is true of man; we need to
study his highest and most important kind of mental activities
while engaged in doing them. Those persons must be studied who
have ability to do those things better than average, and as the most
important thing man can do is to discover more knowledge (it must
be validated before we know it is knowledge) for his guidance, and
to attain a higher and more stable character and personality, and
hence I shall make a laboratory study of scientific method in
persons (geniuses) while they are making and demonstrating and
teaching and applying knowledge; and hence I have my lifework
(and plenty of it) marked out for me.
“I see it will have to consist quite largely of a study of my own
mind while discovering and inventing, not only because I happen
to have some facility in these matters but because my mind is the
only one to which I have direct access and from which I can get
‘inside information.’ I shall be able to do this better than my
predecessors in psychology because of the new and experimental
introspection which I discovered several years ago while making
my tabulated study of ‘judgments’ about which I wrote you.”
Major John Wesley Powell, philosopher, scientist, explorer,
director of the U.S. Geological Survey from 1881 to 1894, and
founder and director of the Bureau of Ethnology, is well
remembered today because of his outstanding contributions, his
colorful exploration of the Colorado River, and his vigorous

[page 79]
personality. His biographer, Darrah, said that Powell was
undoubtedly one of the great men of American history and that
during the nineties he was without question one of the best known
and most influential scientists in North America. Powell wrote: “I
have been out many times to see my friend Elmer Gates at his
researches, which I think of the highest importance. I saw him turn
sunlight directly into electricity, charging a storage battery. I saw
him successfully demonstrate his double microscope to Langley
and Tom Reed, whom I took out to his place. I have read his
psychologic manuscript, four thousand pages of it, and have seen
some of his demonstrations. I think he is doing more for education
and research than any man in the world has ever done and his
discoveries will revolutionize philosophy.”
From a letter at age seventeen to his Uncle Jesse, Gates wrote:
“You need not concern yourself about my overdoing the reading
and thinking and experimenting business; if any wrong comes of it
you will be particeps criminis, for without your purse I would have
had much less experimental research to guide me. The worst thing
that has happened to me is the acquisition of certain deep
convictions (inlook and outlook) which make my relatives and
friends unhappy all except you and Virginia and Gunder—because
they fear I am straying too far away from the sacred dungeons.
Even you, my dear uncle, are a little apprehensive, but I predict if
you live long enough you will see that my lines of thought and
research will be recognized as a Light set on a Hill, bright enough
to drive most of the Darkness out of all the mental dungeons of the
world (if given time enough); and I am perfectly sure that the real
truths about ‘God, Freedom, and Immortality’ will not lose by
deeper and higher knowledge ...and whatever is not truth, what do
you want with it anyhow? For my own peace of mind I just had to
sift the wheat from the chaff with my own kind of sifter, even if
great piles of chaff did nearly smother me now and then (and you
too!). In escaping from the traditions and beliefs into which I was
born, I found myself afloat upon a tumultuous stream of opinions
and speculations, but thanks to favorable influences and freedom
of
[page 80]
thinking I had the guidance of experimental research and my early
in-sights into validation, but it was a difficult struggle and I had
good health and unquenchable enthusiasm and good friends. In
my skepticism I went further than your Kant or Descartes to doubt
the sanity of the human mind itself. . . . It was my opinion, as you
remember, that the mind must find its credentials for proving itself
sane. Well, I see that the mind can, by methods clearly outlined

before me, perform that service for itself and for humanity, if it is
fully unhampered in its thinking, and if it will make the researches
which I see must be made and I shall see that they are made.”
From another letter to Uncle Jesse: “I have therefore concluded
that the ways by which the world has been managed are destined to
be replaced by better ways: that instead of attempting to settle its
great problems by an appeal to precedent and belief and
speculation and opinion they will ere long be actually settled by
the method of science—by demonstrated and tested and validated
science; and that the time will come when science will be our only
guide. It should be a world duty to put our main public energies,
not to political and national squabbles but to getting together the
world’s accumulated knowledge and freeing it (by the new
validation which I must develop) from all that is not true and
carrying on research for the discovery of more knowledge and
providing facilities for its more widespread teaching, in order that
teachings that are really true should begin to exert their wise
influence in the minds of the leaders and multitudes of the earth’s
inhabitants, instead of being misled by so much that is false. As I
look at the problem of world-government it is primarily a matter of
right knowledge and feeling and aims. Science should be taught
thoroughly to the few ablest persons in the world so they may
make better leaders, and just enough of the sciences and arts taught
to the multitudes to enable them more easily to make a livelihood
and live more satisfactorily. The leaders of the various kinds of
affairs require not merely the equivalent of a university course but
a more complete course of instruction and one especially directed
toward a
[page 81]
training in the best known methods of scientific research and
validation, so they may depend for guidance not on precedent or
authority but on scientific method, and this course should omit
those who have not the highest ability and character. The few
millions of the second kind need a direct and quick method, and
facilities for learning just as much (and only as much) of these
sciences and which will help them most in their daily occupation
and habits of living; and thereby science will begin to illumine the
minds of the masses and slowly begin to lead the world.
“The world confronts us with many serious and urgent
problems other than political, and the only safe guidance is true
knowledge and to get it we have to depend on the mind and the
right using of it, for there is naught else upon which to depend.
Hence the foremost task of man is to study the mind and learn its
nature and the laws of its successful activities so we may use it
more effectively in doing the work which the world must have

done to enable its inhabitants more fully to attain a long and happy
and useful life. That is, the responsibility for the right
management of the world rests solely on mind. It is the
experimental study of mind and of the most successful ways of
using it in satisfying our normal feelings, desires, emotions,
aspirations, sympathies for others, and to the attainment of skill in
doing what we have chosen as our occupation; it is to this subject
that I shall devote my life as my specialty. If we fail in attaining
success for individuals or for the world it will be because the mind
fails to discover the knowledge and mental methods needed for
success; we have no guide but mind and the true knowledge it may
discover. As the world does not yet know enough science nor the
best ways of discovering it and is not making a world work of the
business of discovering, it is our greatest opportunity and highest
duty to make a scientific study of scientific method, which is of
course, correct and successful mental method.”
It was during this period that Gates began his study of the
mental habits of inventors, discoverers, and thinkers of the past
[page 82]
from their biographies, and of those of the present by personal
interrogation and observation. He experimented “in many machine
shops, workshops, studios, offices, instrument stores and
manufacturing establishments; studied professional men and
women, skilled laborers, talented people and geniuses; artisans of
all kinds and races engaged in their skilled trades or vocations.” In
the light of his experience and psychologic principles he collected
and systematized whatever was normal and best in their mental
habits and methods. He investigated carefully over one thousand
people of extraordinary minds who, in no single instance after a
discovery or invention, did not at once proceed to violate some
fundamental psychologic or physiologic law of further success. He
never met investigators who were in surroundings that favored
efficient work. When questioned about their mental methods,
these investigators were at a loss to describe them, never having
thought about their work in that manner. Most dwelt on theories
and hypotheses and statements that might or might not have been
true. It was therefore necessary to rely mostly on the only mind to
which he had direct access—his own. This study continued in a
lifelong interest in the habits of workers of every kind; Gates could
talk to anyone and find common ground and learn something about
that person’s work.
The intense zeal with which Gates sought knowledge continued
from this period, from those early years when he “read
everything,” to maturity, when he read only “the best recent
culmination of science.” He noted how he “waded through”

English literature, reading several hundred books with all the

breathless interest that many find in a novel (he read only one
novel, Eugene Sue’s Wandering Jew); how he studied a “little
Latin and less Greek”— just enough to translate slowly and use
them in coining new words, his chief practical interest. After two
years he turned omnivorously to translations of their chief authors
and reveled in these ancient civilizations. He improved his French
and German to read scientific works, and dabbled in several other
languages.
He read eagerly everything on phrenology, mesmerism,
[page 83]
ventriloquism, hypnotism, astrology, palmistry, necromancy,
spiritualism, theosophy, mysticism (“from Jacob Bochme back and
forwards”), kabala, and orientalism, with an open mind; but he
abandoned hope of truth by these methods.
He recalled how he “plunged into” mathematics, buying thirty
volumes on arithmetic, thirty-six on algebra, fourteen on geometry,
half-a-dozen on trigonometry, a dozen on higher branches; and
how absorbed he was in them for a time, catching a dim sight of
one or two new branches. He loved physics all his life, from the
time of Well’s Natural Philosophy to the latest reports, and read
over and over the early leading treatises: Ganot, which he “thought
through” over twenty times; Deschanel and Everett, and Gage and
Barker, ten or twelve times—seeking to discover new bearings on
each separate statement as related to the rest of his knowledge
(mental content). For twenty years, he studied everything of
importance that appeared on such subjects as mechanics, acoustics,
thermodynamics, optics, and electrics. He himself made almost
every important experiment in physics.
In chemistry he experimentally worked through Attfield’s
Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Fresenius’ Analysis, and Miller’s
Inorganic Chemistry and Urinary Analysis; and reread several
times Roscoe and Schorlemmer, Richter’s Organic Chemistry,
Watts’ Dictionary, and several other books. Chemistry and
physics constituted half of his effort for eleven years. (It was later
learned informally, during the war when spies were masquerading
under Gates’ name, that a government investigation rated him ace-
high in physics and chemistry.)
The history “craze,” he recalled, took three hours daily for six
years, and was devoted to universal, medieval, and modern history.
Each national history impressed him as a distinct psychologic
event in the world’s evolution. He followed the history of races
from primitives through the great racial movements. He rapidly
read several hundred volumes.

In religion, he brooded upon the teachings of the various

Bibles, and dwelt upon the strange successes and methods of the
[page 84]
historic religious movements. He studied them without prejudice
because he never preferred or adopted any one, influenced solely
by his interior guidance and spirit of scientific research. Early
religious instructions only indirectly influenced him. “Their forms
and ceremonies seemed crude and cold,” he wrote, “compared to
my red-hot zeal for truth as knowledge, and my unwavering trust
in Mind; their moralities seemed weak to those implied by
scientific progress in psychology; their worship lukewarm to my
own adoration of THE ALL.”
Then came his infatuation with philosophy. He read everything
from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle to Schopenhauer, Fichte,
Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Hegel; and from these to Spencer, Darwin,
Huxley, Comte, and Haeckel; then to modern Monism, Ward,
Powell, and Ladd.
Zoology, botany, mineralogy, crystallography, geology, and
astronomy each came in for its share of study, observation, and
reading. During the next few years Gates found time to travel to
California and camp in its redwood forests during the rainy season
to further his study of biology. He loved the sciences.
He dipped into nearly every subject and was able to gather
facts from each that bore on his life’s mission. He read with
unusual speed, knew the art of skipping and of detecting
paragraphs likely to yield demonstrable facts. All other statements
were rejected, no matter how good the authority. In spite of this
vast amount of reading, he rejected nearly all as theory or opinion.
Nearly always while reading in a subject he corresponded or
talked with specialists in that field. Undoubtedly that was how he
became acquainted with Major Powell and many others. Elmer
Gates realized that his eager thirst for facts and his vivid distrust
for all opinion and theory and human testimony were a true
guidance that led to his later impregnable standpoint. His intimate
study of living great thinkers, feelers, and doers revealed that they
also abandoned all authorities and trusted to their own minds.
His life became one ever-increasing purpose. Out of
[page 85]
inheritance and environment came the naive human mind, and by
its own efforts to study itself the experimental introspection was
discovered, and constant progress continued. He had already
consecrated his life to the Mind Art before the close of this first
period of his lifework. He attained the significant insight that there
were good and efficient ways of using the mental processes, with

or without bodily and environmental regulation, that led to better

mental capacities, and not merely to a greater number of original
ideas but to ideas that were more frequently and completely true.
His further study was approached with zeal, and with an
enthusiasm that “knew no bounds and acknowledged no
difficulties.”
[page 86: blank]

[page 87]
CHAPTER 6
The Beginning of
a Scientific Art of Mind-Using
To you, your mind is the most momentous fact in the universe,

the greatest thing which infinite space contains and must ever
remain to you the most wonderful.
Your mind is to you the Gateway, and Original Thinking the
Golden Key to the universe, for what never enters your
consciousness can never be for you.
—ELMER GATES , early writings
Elmer Gates took a new excursion into studies of how his mind
became most originative and accurate. This led to important new
steps. He collated from all accessible sources alleged data relating
to the mind, and believed that by passing these data
understandingly through his mind certain portions of his brain
would grow functionally stronger and enable him to detect
incongruities and generalizations that had escaped notice. This
practice he followed with great conviction and intensity, eagerly
seeking data and feeling uneasy because they were not accurate.
He became impressed with the need for greater accuracy in what
determines the actual data of a science. “I have read about and
witnessed the irrepressible passions and ambition of intense
[page 88]
personalities,” he said, “but I doubt if anyone else felt greater
eagerness and earnestness and exaltation than I did during this
period.”
He was much baffled by first attempts at a classification of
scientific data from simple to complex, from concrete to abstract.
No criterion existed. Another and greater difficulty was that the
literature of philosophy, psychology, and other sciences was so
vast he could never hope to read it. His Uncle Jesse had spoken
truly indeed. And of what he read there was no way to distinguish
the false from the true. He did the best he could, collected and
classified data that seemed most reliable and typical, but
subsequent experience proved that he did not then have any guide
for best mentative results. But he passed understandingly through
his mind such data as he had, practicing the Mind Art principles.
The result was a greatly increased mental capacity, and the
achievement of more original work than previously attained.
In this early and somewhat empirical stage Gates tried many
things that proved failures, but slowly he felt more confidence in

the method. Empirical ways gave place to scientifically

determined processes, and he felt he was discovering an art that
would enable him to accomplish vastly more than without it.
Through the application of this art to himself he discovered how
his mind made its successful efforts at discovery. This art, he saw,
contained the elements of its own constant improvement, and by its
aid he did all further investigating, and did better work and much
more work.
Re-functioning, as he called his method of processing
mentative data, was fundamentally different from learning by
heart, or reading or studying. As defined later, it is the special re-
consciousing and recognizing of states in a process, a voluntary
recollection of a memory-enregistration to notice all the conscious
elements at their fullest vividness and to repeat fully the
physiologic activities belonging to them. This re-functioning of an
enregistered memory-structure revives and brings again into
consciousness the same, or nearly the same, state of activity that
originally produced the structure; and this re-functioning is
[page 89]
remembrance, reminiscence, and recollection. Every consciously
discriminated state causes certain nervous structures to functionate
and thereby to undergo a structural (metabolic) change that
remains as a more or less permanent anatomical addition. Such an
enregistration is a memory-structure, and its re-functioning is
remembering.
While re-functioning data, he made an effort to introspect and
record very minutely and accurately all he could notice relating to
the states and processes of states while engaged at a mental task
that, during and after quiescence, he did over and over daily for
weeks, so that no aspect would be missed. He noticed that he was
getting excited about something that was nearly ready to happen,
he knew not what. He had noticed this phenomenon before, a
foreglow of a new idea that was on the way. “It is truly wonderful
that the mind can know that it will soon know something new,” he
exclaimed. “If I had not experienced it a number of times I would
not believe it. There is one kind of epilepsy wherein the patient
feels the ‘fit’ coming on, sometimes sees it as a sort of entoptic
light called the ‘aura epileptics.’ In somewhat the same manner
the discovery of a new idea is sometimes preceded by an ‘aura
idealis’: the morning twilight before the sun of the new insight has
risen.” For several days he was aware that he was taking a step,
and at last, greatly to his joy, he found that he had so frequently re-
functioned the states and processes of the mental task that some of
them went on of their own accord as a habit, or automatically, and
were then not modified by the introspective process! It was by a

kind of introspective attention in which the Awareness was a more

dominant factor than previously, but not yet dominant. He called it
the Newer Introspection.
Gates pointed out that he was aware of James’ “field of
consciousness” and of the “marginal states” (which he learned
about later); and he agreed with the modern criticism of the
“faculty psychology” and of the existence of “states” in the sense
of the old psychology. But in any field with its margins in definite
and purposive intellective processes he found a series of successive
and
[page 90]
discriminable states constituting a process of states; the margins
disappear from notice after sufficient re-functioning until the
process goes on automatically.
To study and test his great psychological discovery more fully,
he repeated his experiments, taking this time a definite group of
intellective states and processes, namely, acoustics. He acquired
by observation and experiment its scientific data, then passed
groups of this data through his mind until the process became
habitual and almost automatic. The states were not, like the
alphabet, arbitrarily related; they were “processives” of states, as
he called them-that is, states tied together by rational relations or a
purpose. He studied this subject a long time and became very
familiar with the science of acoustics. By an extensive process he
made a re-study with his own mind, and with other minds that had
previously known nothing of acoustics, to determine the way and
order in which the mind naturally arrives at knowledge of a
science. He introspected every one of his steps and thus became
again interested in mental content and groupings of states, or their
classification.
What constitutes the total memory-content of an average
human mind? What is a mind? What kinds of mental content has
it? What percentage of its memories is useful or true? How does
the content of one mind differ from that of another? What bearing
have variations in content? These were questions about which he
did not want guesses—he wanted knowledge.
“If you say of an object, ‘That is a microscope’, it will be true
only if it contains all the essential parts, not for instance if the
lenses were missing. Now, what is it that must be present? What
details must not be missing? so that it may be true when you say,
‘That is a mind’? How are we to find out except by making a
complete inventory of a mind? But a mind begins its development
at infancy or rather at a pre-infantile stage and grows through
various stages to maturity and old age, thus passing through a
series of developments, all of which steps, with their concomitant

states, processes, functionings and products, must be referred to if

you say, ‘That is a mind’. Not only one,
[page 91]
but many such inventories of the whole life of minds need to be
made, tabulated, and studied if you wish to know what is a mind.”
So he further queried.
He felt the foreglow of a new step, and under this impulse and
leading made a comprehensive inventory of every experience he
could remember or introspectively notice, systematically recorded
under its proper heading of sensory, intellective, introspective,
esthesic, or conative. The good or bad of his life, every
reprehensible or laudable act, was impartially studied. No other
experience of his early life contributed more than the one simple
trait, learned perhaps mostly from his tutor Virginia, of looking at
his mind and work with the impartiality of a third person and thus
eliminating much personal bias.
In several thousand pages, conveniently classified, he recorded
all he could remember of his experiences with or about stars,
plants, animals, minerals, chemicals, mechanics, literature,
language, mathematics, logic, history, fine arts, religion, and
everything else. His total vocabulary was included, as well as all
experiences with emotions, such as those relating to parents,
friends, schooldays, social events, angers, griefs, joys, laughter,
amusements, and all things he had made and done. He was
amazed not only at the magnitude of his inventory but equally at
the vastness of what he did not know about each subject.
It was a long and tedious task. Many times when certain
portions were considered complete he would recall additional
incidents. Maybe it was a book read long ago, or a slight illness or
visit or conversation or a walk or a dream-and it was a task to
record all that could be slowly and indistinctly remembered.
Maybe it was an early acquaintance who was hunted up and
interrogated for assistance in recalling a that had taken place
between them; or perhaps the only clue was some scrap of paper or
part of an old letter. Sometimes by repeating a walk or trip, things
and places could be recalled . . . or rereading books or repeating
experiments. He found it peculiarly difficult to recall with
sufficient definiteness to state them, the emotive pleasures, pains,
and sorrows of earlier life.
[page 92]
Although Gates had almost entirely escaped the “swarms of
pestiferous superstitions and the usual brood of ghost and fairy
stories, Arabian Nights’ tales, Munchausen fictions, Gulliverian
legends and mythologies,” and although his training had been

unusually inductive, nevertheless he was startled to find most of

his mental content obviously useless, irrelevant, theoretical,
false—”utter trash” as he called it: “the unproved, the plainly
untrue, the unimportant, dream-memories, and the thousand-and-
one things that fill the mind like rubbish in an attic or a pile of
driftwood after a flood. For example, when calling on Aunt
Martha yesterday I noticed one corner of her rug was rolled over,
her pet lamb walked in, two sparrows were fighting in the lilac
bush, my chemistry book has an ink spot on its back, I saw two
men walking up the street last winter when there was snow on the
ground, and so on ad infinitum.” Of this mental content, at the
very least he estimated 90 percent as waste! For every one of the
many unimportant details there were hundreds of duplicate
memories beyond the need of any lesson that might be derived
from them. He was certain he did not overestimate (and later
raised the figure to 95 percent).
To the extent that he was able to persuade others of his age to
make such an inventory he found at least an equally large
percentage of trash. He was reminded of the long course of human
progress “during which thousands of successive mythologies and
philosophical vagaries and superstitions formed the chief portion
of the memory content of human minds, and it was by the
functioning of that mostly false content that our brain organs
evolved and our mental habits developed!”
If this 90 percent worthless memory content, he observed,
could be exchanged for actual and useful knowledge of the
sciences and arts, a young person would have room in his mind
and time sufficient to learn twenty times as many facts, formulas,
and laws. He could get an ordinary education in one-fourth the
time, and that would mean much to the world’s inhabitants. If
every day a child were to acquire one-fifth as many worthwhile
memories as he habitually gets useless ones, if he were to
[page 93]
acquire them in classific groups of naturally related data by being
shown the corresponding objects and their interactions and
interrelations, so as to know not on mere authority but upon the
direct evidence of his firsthand experience, how much time do you
think would be saved in getting an education, and how much better
it would be!
But even more important would be the elimination from the
mind of the misleading influence of the untrue, and the
encumbering and clogging presence of the useless mental content.
The valuable content is now too much diluted, the intellectual brew
is too weak and insipid to be stimulating.

This new knowledge about the mind, this vital importance of

mental content, was a very useful discovery, a new method of
psychologic research. It is not likely that many students will have
time or energy to repeat this investigation (it took five years), but
no practice would do more to give a knowledge of their own minds
and a respect for true and classified facts for successful mentation.
Even a small inventory, systematically sampled, should be
illuminating.
After its completion Gates at once selected from his inventory
those specific facts, intellections, esthesias (his term for the
emotions, sentiments, and feelings generally), and acts (conations)
that he knew to be true, then introspected and re-functioned them
weekly (it took that long) By thus re-functioning them and
neglecting the other kind, the valid part of his mind rose into
dominancy, while the untrue and unclassified and catabolic parts
subsided functionally so as not to contribute as much to mentative
conclusions, insights, impulses, and readings.
He became convinced that no matter how certain he was of any
statement, how much he wanted to believe, it was not safe even to
consider it unless he knew it to be true. Only the alethic (the true,
or veridical) inductive experiences can lead to accurate knowledge
by any mental process. Only out of accurate images can accurate
concepts arise; only from true concepts can true ideas be
relationed. The use at any time of theory, hypothesis, speculation,
or myth leads to a vitiation of the mental processes
[page 94]
and a subversion of every conclusion. The whole outlook and
inlook of the self will be distorted by a single belief not formulated
on verified data.
With all the zeal of which he was capable (and that was very
great indeed) he dedicated his future endeavors to ascertaining and
collecting the veridical data of the sciences. He saw that if into
human minds could be put this verified content from each science,
conduct would then be guided more by truth and less by
speculation and theories and beliefs. Only truth acted out in
conduct could lead to good consequences; hence a prime factor in
the mentative art became the re-functionation and introspection of
the true, or alethic, part of the mind until it was dominant.
“Is there any more practical advice to the individual or the
world? Any other way to solve the pressing problems?” he
earnestly asked.
He was so impressed with the practical character of his
discovery and the definite proof of its truth that he more carefully
repeated his investigations. It became increasingly evident at each
step in his researches that while mentative method was of first and

prime importance, the possession of mental states that were

validated data was as important. False data led to wrong
conclusions even with right methods, just as wrong methods gave
wrong conclusions with right data. It became clear that the right
mentative method in acquiring knowledge of a science could not
lead to untrue data, and therefore a truly scientific method of
education is of itself a method of validation.
This understanding of the nature of mental operations by the
discovery of the true nature and scope of the intellective processes
enabled Gates to understand the numerous failures of thinkers and
investigators, and to comprehend clearly that genius is not, as
Nordeau and others supposed, connected with insanity, but is the
normal functioning of the mind when there is a sufficient amount
of true mental content to produce veridical results, and when
normal and efficient methods of mental processes are used. On
looking through the biographies of great
[page 95]
men and carefully noting their successive steps in making
discoveries, it became apparent that they were, as mentioned
before, working in ignorance of almost every environmental,
bodily, and psychologic condition of success. For every success,
they experienced hundreds of failures; for every hour of efficient
mentative functioning, they had spent many hundred hours of
obstructed and diverted functioning through wrong mental habits.
Seeing with clearness the nature of true, or alethic, data—and
seeing that the only way to acquire them was by inductive
experience with objects and phenomena and a psychologic
classification of the resulting data—Gates embarked on a second
pilgrimage, resolving to acquire a more definite acquaintance with
his mental functions while engaged in making discoveries and
inventions.
Once again he repeated his experimental introspection,
bringing one class of conscious states into antecedent and
simultaneous and subsequent activity with reference to each other
class. He did this over and over until it was automatic. It was hard
work and required long practice, he warned, because it was new to
the human race. The savage does not identify a subjective mind
but only objective things, without suspecting the intermediation of
a mental process. Certain mental faculties like the musical or
mathematical have long been known, yet not all people are
musicians and fewer yet are mathematicians. Very few can really
introspect. The average person who thinks himself interested will
try introspection a few hours daily for a few months and abandon
the effort and discredit it. To succeed one must have introspective
ability and devote several years to it.

By the term “faculty” Gates meant no implication with the old

“faculty psychology,” but a discriminably distinct kind of mental
functioning, such as sensating, imaging, or introspecting. Appetite
and respiration are physiologic faculties. A faculty is any distinct
biotic activity, cognitive or physiologic, inclusive of all its states,
processes, and acts.
He very carefully and systematically repeated the main phases
of these experiments while under greater quiescence and re-
functioned
[page 96]
to automatism, and he was able to intensify the mental states that
previously were comparatively faint. Having acquired greater
maturity of mind and power of attention, he was able to formulate
the psychologic nomenclature by which his results were recorded.
New capacities were developed, particularly in the two kinds of
introspection, that led to his discrimination of the difference
between Consciousness and Awareness.
With these advantages he completed and corrected his
inventory of rememberable mental content, and discovered many
new facts and relations. The result was a description of the mind
in terms of all its conscious states and processes and operations
with these processes. While there are physiologic habits and other
kinds of subconscious aptitudes from oft-repeated activities,
constituting an important kind of organic experience, it is self-
evident and immediately known, he stressed, that all experience
that is known to the mind consists in conscious states (and their
differentiations, integrations, sequences, and relations). All
knowledge thus consists in conscious states; and to discover more
about the nature of knowledge, he recorded every conscious step in
the process by which his mind, through its inductive experience
with the phenomena of a science while learning it, actually
acquired the conscious states that are the data of that science. Thus
he also discovered how these data could be psychologically
classified, constituting what he termed a psychologic taxis, or
psychotaxis, of the data of a science. For this purpose he again
selected acoustics and taught it to several persons experimentally
and to himself by supposing he knew nothing about it.
The psychotaxis of the sciences and of the intellections is one
of the cornerstones of a scientific education; so his description will
be followed in some detail. He proceeded by much experiment,
observation, and introspection to make an inventory of the mind’s
experiences with the phenomena of a science. He found that if he
could not experience any sensations—if he could not touch objects
or press upon them or feel whether they were warm or cold, or

exert muscular strength on them, or be tickled by them, or smell or

taste or hear or see them—if he could not
[page 97]
have any of the kinds of sensations (at least ten or more) produced
by the objects acting as stimuli upon his sense organs, then he
could not possibly know anything about their characteristics or
even about their existence. Therefore, he concluded, the first
chapter of any science, its simplest and most fundamental data,
consists in sensations; that is, sensory experiences with the
phenomena of that domain of nature.
An inventory of these sensory data involves no hypotheses or
theories whatever. Even if according to Berkeley and certain
Idealists we philosophically conceive of these phenomena as
nonexistent, we do actually have these sensations and clusters of
them. Out of all the sensory experiences derived from any object
comes an integration of them called an “image.” In Gates’ sense it
means not only a pictorial or visual image but combined with it an
auditory image, a tangial (“touch”) image, and the images of all the
other senses-the image being complete only when each sensory
capacity has contributed all that it can derive from the object. This
composite image is not a composite photograph, because only the
visual factors can be photographed, but a unique kind of mental
integrant comprising all sensory data as remembered states and
their corresponding brain-enregistrations, in which each element
has mutually modified all the others. To omit from this synthetic
image any datum of any phase of one of these sensory capacities is
to leave it incomplete and incorrect, with certain physical
characteristics of that object unknown and unrepresented.
Accordingly, when these images are classified, the mind creates
wrong and incomplete groups, because it classifies not objects but
only the sensorily derived images. The whole intellective super-
structure arising therefrom will be distorted and untrue and
abnormal; the memory-enregistrations in the brain will be
abnormal. Therefore the second chapter of data of any science
consists in images.
In classifying images the human race has been guided largely
by philosophical speculation and linguistic peculiarities; but
according to the psychotaxic method, the mind, guided by its
fundamental capacity to detect likenesses and differences between
its
[page 98]
conscious states, creates new and more truthful groupings of
images into “concepts.” These are somewhat different from those
named in the languages of the world, and more nearly true to the

nature of things. The third chapter of any science therefore

consists in concepts.
The next step was discovering the interactive and other
relations between conceptual groups of objects to form “ideas.”
Thus, for in-stance, Gates’ concept of magnetism represented an
actual group of magnetic bodies, and his concept of heat an actual
group of hot bodies of which sensorily derived images were in his
mind. When by experimentally conducted sensory or perceptual
observation, he discovered that magnetic bodies have an effect on
the temperature of hot bodies, he thereby attained an idea of that
kind of relation between the concepts of magnetism and heat. The
reciprocal relation was observed, to discover that hot bodies
diminish the attraction of magnetic bodies to give the idea of that
relation between the concepts of heat and magnetism. In a similar
way he could try to discover relations between magnetism and
each other concept of that science or other science, but it must be a
discovered relation and not a fiction or it would not, in the mind-
using sense, be an idea at all; and it must not be a successful guess,
because it would not be scientifically known until inductively
demonstrated. The fourth chapter of data of a science therefore
consists in ideas.
If there are a thousand concepts in a science, then the whole
business and opportunity of the investigator is to try to "relate"
experimentally and observationally each concept of that science to
each other one-the first on the list with each other one, the second
with each remaining one, and so on, including the reciprocal
relations, such as the second with the first. When accomplished,
he has to the extent of his mental capacity systematically “ideated”
every concept of that science. (In the instance above there would
be 999,000 possible relations, or ideative efforts.) Hitherto this has
been tried without such comprehensive system or rational method;
and thus it happens that the human
[page 99]
race has attempted only a comparatively small part of the ideative
possibilities offered by the concepts of any science. It could not be
done at all with the present arbitrary, theoretical, and
nonpsychotaxic list of concepts. But with the psychotaxic
concepts, systematic ideation becomes practical and startlingly
fruitful, reducing experimental investigation to a scientifically
comprehensive system and its mentative process to a scientific art.
Gates found by question and examination that even specialists
in a science did not possess images of all its objects—generally not
more than 20-30 percent, and most of them not only incomplete
but largely incorrect! To get true images, concepts, and ideas of
the kind used as a basis of original ideation and thinking requires

first the enregistration, by firsthand experience, of the subunits,

otherwise the normal machinery of mentation will be absent. One
fault of the present educational system is that it attempts to teach
thoughts before ideas, or ideas before concepts—the intellections
being in any chance order, or rather, disorder. The words image,
concept, idea, and thought as used here have more definite and
somewhat different meanings than those usually given in
dictionaries and textbooks, in which they are defined largely in
terms of each other, meaning everything and therefore nothing in
particular.
Out of ideas the mind constructs a new and higher kind of
mental unit termed a thought (or law of the first degree of
generalization). It is a truth common to two or more ideas. There
are also thoughts of the second and third degree of generalization.
The fifth, sixth, and sometimes seventh chapters of data of a
science consist in thoughts.
The next step in systematic intellection applies each other unit
higher than concept to each other coordinate unit (as idea or
thought). Other similar steps follow. An equally extensive series
of data consists in introspects of all the foregoing kinds of
conscious states—an “introtaxis.”
When the mentator has enregistered a memory-content of the
data of a science, he has only completed the task by one third.
[page 100]
He should proceed to enregister the corresponding introspects, and
lastly combine the two into one taxis. Introspects are usable as a
new kind of data by intellection.
This training is essential because the mind distinguishes
between that part of its content which has properly originated from
the study of objective phenomena and that part which is merely the
mind’s introspects of that content. This is a distinction not made
before. Introspects are coordinate in value with intellective data;
and without making these two kinds of enregistrations it would
have been impossible for Gates to unravel the skein of the mind’s
illusions and to arrive at that kind of skill to discover the science of
Consciousness.
In other words, he inductively determined that the first
experiences with things are sensory: that the mind groups into one
cluster the sensations derived from one object, then puts like
objects together, and then studies the relations of these classes. In
cognitive mentation we begin with sensations and are not
concerned with their origin. A real and true classification of the
data of a science will consist in sensations, images, concepts, ideas,
thoughts, and introspects. Incorrect and incomplete images, false
concepts, and untrue ideas and unproved thoughts win not fit in

such a psychotaxis. There are no experiences except mental ones,

and when remembered, all become cognitions and are as such
intellections. A pain is not an intellection, but the memory of it is.
Thus one may have intellections of all the feelings and conations.
The simplest process of the intellect is sensating, and its simplest
states are sensations. If we name a sensation or image, we add
certain elements and make a concept of it. If we perceive a
sensation as such, it is by an act of perception that involves the
fourth kind of intellective data and the corresponding fourth
process of ideation. The unit of perception is the ideated concept.
Intellection Gates defined as the consciousness of relations and
a process by which we become conscious of relations—the product
and process of that kind of mentation called the
[page 101]
intellect. “Relation” is a comparison or connection between things
that would cease to exist if one were annihilated. Thus the moon
bears the relation of being smaller than the earth; if the earth were
annihilated, the relation would cease to exist.
He found that when intellections were psychotaxically
diagrammed, the classification was self-indicating of classific truth
and self-eliminating of classific error. The data of a science were
reduced to an incredibly small compass. It would take many
volumes, for instance, to contain an encyclopedic epitome of
electrical science, but a psychotaxis of all the images, concepts,
ideas, and thoughts ever discovered relating to electricity could be
put in one small volume. The psychotaxic system of observing the
data of a science was a more complete and efficient method of
avoiding theory and illusion. The only kind of mental content
worth introspecting and re-functioning was the data of a science.
He found too that this system produced more discoveries, as in his
work with acoustics.
Gates established an important law: that a psychotaxis of the
intellective states relating to a science is at the same time a
psychotaxis of the data of that science, and the two are mutually
corrective. The taxonomy of the objective and subjective worlds
must agree in one psychologic classification or psychotaxis. The
psychotaxis of conscious mental states (derived from actual
experiences of consciousness with the phenomena of a science) is a
psychologic classification of the only possible data of that science,
being a more truthful and advantageous classification of facts and
laws, divested of the usual content of theory and hypothesis. This
classification, based on the actual likenesses and differences of the
conscious states as they are directly and immediately introspected,
puts classific order, simplicity, and light into a subject hitherto
almost hopelessly chaotic and dark.

A psychotaxis of all the experiences that the mind of man is

able to get from a study of some one class of phenomena, for
example chemicals, constitutes the science of that domain of nature
and knowledge. There are, or ought to be, as many
[page 102]
sciences as there are groups of objective and subjective things and
classes of relations; that is, as many as there are actual experiences
of consciousness.
What classes can the mind have? That is, from how many
distinct domains can the mind get intellections (sensations, images,
concepts, thoughts)?
Gates had already taken the first step in answering this question
when he made and classified the inventory of his total
rememberable and active mental content. It was the most
exhausting work he had ever done. Each memory was listed with
some like group. Every thing and meaning that was named in
English, German, French, Latin, Greek, and several other
dictionaries was likewise, word by word, assigned its place.
He found after many corrections, additions, and
approximations that all data related to certain great groups of
subjects or domains of nature (objective and subjective); and no
data could be found that did not come within one of these groups.
The classification grew out of the data inductively, and not by a
priori or armchair speculation, he emphasized. He had classified
about everything the language of man had named and everything
he could fish out of the memory of himself and several others, and
could find no other states or data (there were more of course, he
pointed out, for much was omitted, but the general conclusion was
not affected). Afterward he found many new meanings, for which
he coined names or assigned symbols, but these states a fell into
their classific places.
He arrived at the following classification of the sciences—
1.Experiences of the mind with itself (comprising the data

of introspective psychology).
2. Experiences of the mind with other selves or living
things (such as comparative psychology, sociology, biology,
bacteriology).
3. Experiences of the mind with matter (such as chemistry,
mineralogy, crystallography, radiology).
4. Experiences of the mind with motion (such as acoustics,

[page 103]
mechanics, thermodynamics, optics, electricity-or physics
broadly).
5. Experiences of the mind with quantity (mathematics
broadly).
6. Experiences of the mind with time sequences (history,
evolution).
7. Experiences of the mind with Consciousness.
This method of classification, he noted, differs from other

methods such as those of Comte, Bain, Spencer, and Ward, in that
it is a psychological classification (psychotaxis) of the sciences,
and therefore conforms more nearly to the way in which the mind
knows and creates the sciences. These groups are subdivisions of
mental experiences and consequently of psychology. Hence from
the mind-using standpoint, psychology is not only the one science
but the science of sciences, just as the Mind Art is the art of arts.
So Gates’ early view of the sciences and arts as mental
products, and his study of them to find out more of the nature of
mind and knowledge, were justified in these results. He was often
asked: “Why do you devote so much time and prominence to the
experimental study of the sciences when your laboratories are
devoted to psychology? Why study music, metallurgy,
microscopy, photography, electricity, and the am generally?” Not
only are the sciences discovered and known by the mind’s
activities and in no other way, he answered, but each science is a
particular mode of mental functioning and kind of mental content
that grows, when rightly learned, more mind and brain relating to
that domain and makes it more operative in the mind. Only to the
extent that the mind has knowledge of these first six domains can it
be considered fully normal—that is, in full functional relation and
responsiveness to all domains of cosmos. Only as it possesses
some knowledge of each can it have the fullest and safest conduct
guidance. If it has acquired no enregistered brain-structures
corresponding to any particular domain, it will be abnormal; and to
the degree that the mind
[page 104]
has acquired untrue knowledge and thus enregistered false brain
structures, it will be pathologic. This conclusion followed from the
data; it is a revolutionary and startling truth.
In like manner the arts represent what the mind has done in
applying knowledge. The mental process is not completed until
the truth known, the beauty felt, is rendered into deed. “These
splendid results,” Gates exclaimed, “elated me almost be-yond
endurance; the joy was unique, the discoveries were so precisely

what I wanted to know.” He could not quit thinking about them,

even at night. To cure his over absorption he put in more time in
his laboratory at experiments that required physical effort, and
after a few weeks he began to rewrite the already often revised
account of his researches to include the new discoveries. It
required the recasting of almost every paragraph, and much new
nomenclature was introduced. He was delighted that the Newer
Introspection, even while being born, revealed its practical nature
by producing these steps.
Even at this time he realized that his new methods could not be
learned outside the laboratory. The data for an art of discovering
must be derived from an inductive study of the objective world by
observation, experimentally directed—and of the subjective world
by introspection, experimentally directed. A theory, he found, is
not a true mentative datum. Only a fact is, and not only if heard
about. Then it is an “accept,” to use Major Powell’s term. Valid
mentative data consist in actually experienced sensations, in
images derived from actual objects by inductive observations, in
concepts actually acquired by grouping images of objects, in ideas
inductively acquired by experimentally relating objects, and
thoughts resulting from the generalization of ideas. Data not thus
acquired, for which the sub-units are missing, are not mentative
data. Statements are not data merely because they are plausible or
sincerely believed; they are not valid unless known to be true, and
the only mode of knowing so far is induction-and induction
consists in sensating, imaging, conceptuating, ideating, thinking,
and introspecting.
This new taxonomy of mind and new taxonomy of a science
[page 105]
are not two taxes but one psychotaxis: a discovery resulting from
his deliberate application of the mentative art. When once
comprehended, this method of classification takes full possession
of the mind; and he cheerfully predicted that psychotaxis is an
ideal that will work out its own fulfillment. “Psychotaxis when
accomplished will be the world’s most valuable possession. The
modem age has no task more important,” he declared, “than the
ascertainment and strict validation of the data of the sciences; and
no step is more important than learning how to use the mind.”
With the advantage of these new methods, he systematically
and laboriously went over the data of several sciences. It was a
formidable task to re-functionate the images, concepts, ideas, and
thoughts of some domain of nature and to practice the operation of
analysis and synthesis with the results, and still more with several
sciences. But out of it arose a great practical skill with

introspection; his whole mind was augmented in capacity, and

many improvements resulted in the art of mentation.
It was during these laboratory studies of the way the mind

learned, that Gates assumed a more critical attitude toward the
subconscious that enabled him to break away from its “thralldom.”
He wrote: “Out of the myriad functionings that are going on below
my consciousness, even when it stands tip-toe on the misty, mental
mountain top to see the dawn, there come myriad pictures and
feelings and impulses and insights out of the phylogenetic past,
tinctured with all that is animalistically basic in that past and also
with much that is lower than my present levels of conscious
civilized life; and I have seen the absolute necessity of using the
subconscious functioning as a slave and not allowing it to become
master over the conscious knowledge guidance. The subconscious
is like the pent-up waters of a great dam which you may turn on
and cause to run your mill wheel, or you may let them break
through the walls and destroy you.
“When in the semi-light you look into indistinctly illuminated
regions and see ghosts or gods, according as your fancy directs,
[page 106]
or when you look upon daubs of coloring on the wall in half-
dreaming wakefulness and see sometime a beautiful maiden or an
ugly monster, or when you look at the clouds and like old Polonius
see a whale or a camel as the momentary whim chooses —so I find
the subconscious deals with the ontogenetic memories and
phylogenetic instincts and desires, and creates out of them
ceaselessly and with astounding rapidity all kinds of false, half-
true, and often new and beautiful in-sights, which the conscious
intellective life may validate and use ac-cording to its methods and
do safely. But to mistake these promptings and symbolic visions
and insights as coming from something higher than the conscious
self is one of the horrible mistakes of mysticism and of the past,
and is the central danger of inspiration. The word sent you out of
the subconscious is not the voice of God—it is the cry of slaves for
a chance to serve. This power of the subconscious is one of the
infra-logical processes which the conscious intellection must learn
to use as a tool.”
The subconscious has been the subject of much speculation and
misunderstanding. But from that time on Gates knew the true
place of its functionings and how to utilize them as physiologic
and psychologic workers by which conscious processes are carried
on. He saw that there could be no intellective authority in the
subconscious; it was demoted as a wise guide in any matter for
which there was knowledge guidance. The physiologic processes

and instincts are inherited just as is our esthesic nature; and all are
part of the subconscious, non-volitional “urge of life.” The
instincts have been inherited from a past out of which we have
evolved, if in progressive evolution, and the verdicts of the
subconscious are on a lower plane and of a lower order than those
of the present conscious mind. If we found ourselves in
retrogressive evolution, some instincts might be on a higher level.
By the subconscious states and processes Gates meant all those
conatus-activities of an organism that are necessary to produce
conscious states and processes, functionings out of which
conscious states may arise and upon which, in turn, conscious
states may act and thereby influence the activity of the organism.
[page 107]
The subconscious is therefore the general name for an organic
functionings that take place below the consciousness of the
individual. All rememberable experiences are in the keeping of the
subconscious-ness; that is, of the subconscious memory-processes.
The subconscious contains all that portion of Me, mind, and self of
a creature that does not become conscious to it, including a
memory while being recollected. Within subconsciousness lie the
mystery of heredity, the wonders of ontogeny repeating phylogeny,
and the marvels of life and consciousness. It is the name of the
conatus of an organism and especially of the activities and states of
the cerebrospinal and sympathetic nervous system.
Subconsciousness lies underneath consciousness like the unseen
foundations of a lighthouse.
Subconsciousness is simply, Gates summarized, that part of the
mind that has become so automatic by generations of repetition
that it no longer rises into consciousness, and that part whose
stimuli and states are too weak to rise into (above the limen of)
consciousness.
We inherit no intellections—not one. They have to be acquired
by conscious experience with the present, local, individualistic,
temporal, and particular environment and self. They would not be
of adaptive value otherwise. For a given individual and
environment the guidance of an instinct may be wholly wrong and
fatal; if there is not reliable and trusted knowledge relating to any
impulse out of the subconscious, then he will be at the mercy of
instincts adapted to a kind of self and environment that no longer
exists. The safe guide to action (conduct) is conscious knowledge,
and upon its extent and validity depend safety and success. Upon
intellection we depend for directive effort. In this subconscious
realm lie the infralogical or sublogical processes. Gates now saw it
to be the province of intellective processes and validation to utilize
only those subconscious functionings that are involved in the

physiologic and psychophysical carrying on of intellective

processes and normal esthesic states; and in this, scientific
knowledge is the only guide.
“A leading, or instinctive impulse-to-do, is a blind tendency
[page 108]
which may defeat itself or succeed, as may happen without
knowledge guidance. An insight, upon which mysticism has
looked as communion with God, interprets itself by the aid of the
knowledge and beliefs and suggestions found in the brain of the
mystic. The subconscious knows not whether these beliefs are true
or not and has no way of knowing; it does not judge between true
and false, good or bad, useful or useless, helpful or harmful, but
accepts what the brain tells it and goes ahead as blindly as an
avalanche. A blind trust of the mystic in the authority and wisdom
of mysticism has been the ‘False Guide’ in that line of effort.”
Although he was not a mystic, Gates emphasized, he demoted
insights and impulses-to-do to their proper lower level and used
them as willing workers, ever active when a task is set, suggesting
combinations of “material” furnished the subconscious of which he
could never have thought.
The subconscious is the basis of suggestive therapeutics; it will
perform physiologic feats according to the suggestion made,
provided the person believes what he tells it. In the same way an
[page 109]
intellective process is physiologically carried on by the
subconscious it sets spontaneously to work, and in regard to any
problem many ideas occur in quick succession, which may be true
or false until the intellect validates them.
“In this domain of the subconscious,” he continued, “are heard
the echoes of all the old faiths and fears, idols and incantations,
worryings and worships of thousands of generations of ancestors;
and these echoes are not the ‘still small voice’ of the Most High,
but dreamlike vestiges of our phylogeny. Gaze upon a mottled
wallpaper in a dim light and the subconscious will create picture
after picture, re-combining and often adding what is not there. So
the subconscious uses all your memory-content and instincts and
dream-memories, and the echoes of old struggles and joys, and
creates combinations of all kinds; and if you are trying to solve a
problem it will suggest countless combinations until often the
conscious mind finds one that proves to be true. This is Poincare’s
theory of the way his mind discovered the solution of mathematical
problems; and the same experience all naive discoverers and
inventors have had. It is the old way to mentate, but not the
scientific way. The new way was born out of the old; and out of

readings (impulse-insights) were suggested to my conscious mind

steps that, under the guidance of scientific method, led to the Mind-
art.”
[page 110: blank]

[page 111]
CHAPTER 7
Attention, Dirigation,
and the Newest Introspection
The discoveries, inventions, and mental capacities obtained by

these new methods of introspection were the initial steps that led to
simple dirigation and introspective dirigation by which any bodily
or mental conscious function could be indefinitely augmented and
directed, and the subconscious processes augmented and
controlled.
My whole life has been a perpetual introspective dirigation and
an awareness of the one subject of the art of using mind . . . which
became life’s one incentive—so fascinating that nothing else has
ever been of much interest. From my twelfth year on, my life was
but a part of this one great experiment in the art of using the mind.
—ELMER GATES , early writings
Elmer Gates took up other subjects in ways similar to his study

of acoustics until he began to get original ideas. He tried many
different ways to discover what would produce in the shortest time
the greatest number of new ideas that would experimentally prove
true. Having found that the largest part of his mental content was
not worth introspecting, that validated
[page 112]
scientific data were the only normal data worth the efforts he
selected another branch of physics, thermodynamics. He taught it
to several persons and retaught it to himself. After several months
of experimental work in acquiring anew his mental content relating
to heat, and after new ideas had ceased to come, he directed his
attention first to one classific group of thermodynamic data, and
after several months to another, and so on with all groups. He thus
became dominant upon thermodynamics; all other subjects were
eclipsed in attention, and there arose an intense desire to answer
questions on, and know more about, heat. He kept intending his
mind on this subject until new ideas and thoughts, born out of the
data in his mind, began to arrive. They turned out to be mostly
true, and were not partial glimpses or often entirely untrue ones
like his old naive insights. The new ideas were actually discovered
relations between actual concepts; the new thoughts were
generalizations from true ideas. As these data were held
uppermost in attention, the whole subject assumed a degree of
vividness and clarity and precision that was new and wonderful to
experience—as in a vision. Every datum of that science was in

readiness at a second’s notice, and only such data occupied the

field of consciousness. All that hinterland of useless memories and
speculations disappeared from focus, and original ideas in thermo-
dynamics of a higher type began to form, some of which were the
basis of practical inventions. It was the mental method, however,
that was of interest.
Optics was selected as the next subject. After twelve weeks’
reflection upon what he remembered from a short course two years
before, only five new ideas resulted. Just one proved to be true, the
false ones being the result of a theory that was accepted as fact.
The results were not so prolific nor so easily acquired as in the
previous mentation, although he tried harder. Before repeating this
attempt, he experimentally re-acquired the data of optics to get
new experiences and eliminate false data. In two weeks of
directing his attention to these data he found eight new ideas, all of
which proved true.
[page 113]
He had noticed in his early experiments on conditions affecting
mentation that he had greater facility in solving problems
connected with the scientific domain that he was introspecting. It
was now evident that this holding of a subject in mind
introspectively produced some definite effect upon the mental
processes and perhaps upon the brain, or it would not thus
inevitably tend to new and true ideas. Also if only true data were
held in consciousness, generalizations from his mental content
were more apt to be true than false. The mind accepts both true
and false with equal faith; and when a generalization includes both,
it cannot be true. This practice became an important part of his
growing art of discovery; namely, to re-acquire the data of a
science in the psychotaxic way to eliminate the false data, then
render the true content more dominant by introspective attention,
or dirigation, to illuminate with awareness only the true and leave
the false out of focus so that when relations were discovered or
generalizations made, results would be true. His former tutor, Dr.
Armstrong, who heard the first announcement of this law, said,
“You can now quit work and retire; you have done your part for
human welfare. All you need to do is to publish this one law and
the method of applying it.”
Four years before his next experiment Gates had learned the
elements of the electrical branch of physics, but that knowledge
had lain dormant. He set aside two weeks to see if suddenly he
could get new ideas on the subject. He began by directing his
attention first to one group and then another of electrical data, and
thus kept the subject in mind at the same time each day, when well
nourished and well rested, and in a room free from disturbances.

Each day began with a short period of quiescence. Then he would

understandingly pass through consciousness each datum, holding it
well in mind a few minutes. Then a synthetic view of the whole
subject was held for a time. The possible relations and uses of
each datum, the one to the other, were considered. After five
weeks a number of new ideas began to occur; the mind had been
put to work and was producing results in the selected subject.
While seven ideas were new to
[page 114]
him, six proved to be not true, and the other not new but a
discovery of Faraday’s.
Gates reacquired electrical data psychotaxically, eliminating
the false, and kept them in attention. In three weeks eleven new
ideas resulted, all but one of which were true, that being due to a
false datum that had crept into his synopsis.
As his acoustical data had been dormant for almost two years,
he then directed his attention to his synopsis of acoustics and
music, and made many musical inventions and a few discoveries.
He found that while he could select the subject, he could not
predetermine what problems would be solved. That seemed to be
determined by (1) the kind of data in his mind, (2) the kind of
development made by his mind, (3) the kind of growth that took
place in his brain, and (4) the next logical or classific step in his
knowledge of that subject. This series of experiments impressed
him very much. “Could that strange and mysterious something
called mind be called upon to do work, and that most important
kind—discovering new knowledge?” he wrote.
He resolved to study attention more closely, and its effects on
mind and body. He made hundreds of introspective and attentional
experiments every day, spending eight or ten hours in profound
quiet and keeping the subject of attention longingly uppermost in
mind, “hoping, desiring, willing, craving that the Cosmical Mind-
process might cause new ideas to enter consciousness.” After six
weeks’ effort he attained a number of new ideas, thoughts, and
insights, and discovered what he termed “dirigation” (from the
Latin dirigo, “to direct”).
When he limited his attention to some bodily part, he soon
became aware of a feeling in it which, when the attention was
prolonged, became more distinct. After several hours’ practice
daily for some months, the feeling became greatly intensified, to a
sense of fullness, pressure, warmth, tingling, and indefinite
excitations of the nerves of touch and temperature. By much
practice he acquired skill in quickly dirigating intense feeling in
any part of his body that he could mentally locate by getting its

[page 115]
“local sign” in mind. To obtain a local sign, a conscious feeling
must first be experienced in some bodily part or organ in order to
locate it mentally. An organ like the pancreas or spleen can be
located only from pain in it caused by ill-ness, or from special
medicines given to locate the organ.
Everyone has noticed without doubt the increased pain due to
paying attention to a toothache, nausea, or inflammation.
Professor W. B. Carpenter, taking his cue from Harvey, spoke of
the tingling sensation produced by “thinking” of some part of the
body. However, Gates observed that Professor Carpenter had
carried it no further, and that its significance was not understood.
After eight months’ practice Gates could quickly get an intense
feeling in any bodily part selected. Another form of practice was
changing the dirigation from one part to another, which gave
greater control over his body, and later gave a chance to study the
volitional factor of conation. The mind, as it were, took conscious
possession of parts over which it previously had but little
governing power, and the health of every part was augmented. At
first the feeling dirigatively aroused seemed simple and of one
quality, but after a few years’ practice it appeared as a complex of
several different kinds of feeling that varied with the part. By
introspectively selecting one feeling out of this complex and
dirigating to it alone, a different local effect was produced with a
feeling different from the whole. Dirigation to certain of these
feelings definitely and measurably augmented the flow of blood
and metabolism in the part. Mosso, the Italian physiologist, at a
later date measured the increased weight of the head due to
augmented blood supply during dreams and mental excitement, but
Elmer Gates approached this from another standpoint, traced its
relations to voluntary effort, and studied its general effects on body
and mind.
Regular dirigation augmented the growth of a bodily part. As
an example, a patient who was taught to dirigate was able to
increase measurably the girth of one arm. Also abnormally small
organs could slowly be increased in size, and it
[page 116]
became evident that dirigation had applications in curing certain
diseases and underdeveloped organs, as well as in training the
attention. It was not difficult, after sufficient practice, by
dirigation to produce emesis, catharsis, enuresis, salivation,
lactation, lachrymation, and even sudoresis. But dirigation may
psychologically produce physiological effects; it may cause
appetite and laughter, healthy skin and cheerfulness, strength and
exhilaration.

Gates also found that dirigation to sensory nerve-endings of the

special senses, such as those of touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing,
warmth, and cold, greatly increased the discriminative capacity.
Thus after sufficient dirigation to the hearing organs he could hear
fainter sounds and detect more minute differences between slightly
differing pitches and amplitudes. (He recorded his upper limit of
hearing as 55,000 c.p.s.) After having dirigated to hearing, if he
dirigated to seeing he could feel something that seemed to leave
the hearing organs and centers and go to the sight centers. He
concluded that he felt the innervation and vasomotor blood
dominancy leaving one set of structures and going to the other.
Finally he found that he could dirigate not only to the nerve
endings of a special sense but to its functional center in the brain.
To locate mentally its local sign required persistently continued
practice until a feeling of fatigue was noticed. Dirigation to the
nerve endings increased their sensitiveness as instruments for
responding to their stimuli, while dirigation to the brain-center
increased the discriminative powers of the introspective and
analytic attention and augmented the natural functional activity of
those parts.
When dirigation was to a sensory brain-center, it caused
spontaneous “memoriam” images of a kind corresponding to the
particular sense: when to the cerebral sight-center, pictures and
visions; when to the hearing center, auditory images of voices and
tones; when to a motor-center, images of walking and flying; and
so on.
If dirigation was intense, frequent, and prolonged it produced a
functional hyperesthesia that aroused images of more than
[page 117]
usual vividness—a “dream-like” vividness and a self-active sort of
spontaneity that was less subject to volitional modification than the
memorial images. If these dreamlike images were dirigated to
with sufficient intensity and frequency, there resulted not only an
increased hyperesthesia but also a vasomotor surcharging of the
functionally active organs, producing a hyperemia that created
something still more vivid, phantasms, which were so seemingly
real and so little susceptible to modification by voluntary effort
that they were apt to be mistaken for reality. The image is thought
to be an apparition. If this dirigation was continued, the hyperemia
would not subside and the phantasm would become permanent,
and the result would be delusional insanity, as happens in
monomania.
Gates then found he could shift the dirigative dominancy from
sensating to imaging, and thus he gradually learned to dirigate to
the cortical image areas of each sense; and from that state to

dirigative control of the higher intellections, such as conceptuating,

ideating, and thinking. This practice was an aid to intellection,
rendering the function more alert, active, quick, and intense. One
or two days’ practice enabled him to render dominant and fully
active any one of the intellectual powers, and its work was then
done more easily, quickly, and accurately than otherwise.
This dirigation was extremely difficult because at first he could
not locate the function anatomically. A process like ideating or
thinking has not a definite center but consists in groups of cells and
fibers and ganglia scattered variously throughout the cerebrum and
subcerebral nervous structures. After long effort he could dirigate
to a functional activity as soon as it could be distinguished from all
other kinds of functioning. This he discovered how to do in two
ways: by overworking that function just enough to feel slightly the
prodromata of its fatigue; and by rapid alternation of different
kinds of functions, as first the arithmetical, then the musical,
changing rapidly until its unique distinction between the feelings
was identified. The local sign was
[page 118]
not necessarily the feeling of a bodily part but of an activity that
differed qualitatively from other activities. Dirigation to the
mental activities concerned with mathematics, for example,
augmented ability in that line and increased the fruitfulness of new
ideas.
Frequent dirigation of the happy esthesias made him brighter
and stronger; of the depressing and melancholy ones, weaker and
apathetic. By calling up an emotion, quickly changing to another
and alternating, he introspectively found the local sign; the
emotion could then be aroused without the aid of expedients at first
necessary.
A pupil could be taught dirigatively to functionate all the happy
esthesias more often in a single week, and get a fuller acquaintance
with them, than he would normally in years of ordinary life. By
this means the tide of life’s energies will be augmented, and every
mental capacity and activity increased, Gates pointed out. Emotive
dirigation had many times enabled him to “keep sorrow in
abeyance and worry at arm’s length.”
If the true data are dirigatively brought into consciousness and
not the false, the former will become dominant and the latter will
atrophy. If the happy and not the unhappy emotions are dirigated,
the mind will soon be devoid of depressing conditions; and so with
motives and all other conscious states. Dirigation is the key to the
method by which the mind can be largely made over, especially in
connection with later methods. Through dirigation he was first
able to say, “I am ruler over my own mind.”

In volitional dirigation he found it necessary first to separate

introspectively the volitional from concomitant esthesive and
intellective states; also from the effort-feeling that accompanies a
conation. It was particularly difficult to discriminate between the
volitional factor per se and the effort-feeling, and it would have
been impossible without his long previous experience in
experimental introspection, quiescence, and awareness. When
once he got clearly before his introspection just what constitutes
the volitional part of a conation, and dirigated, it became so
[page 119]
astonishingly vivid that he was surprised never to have noticed it.
Volitional dirigation more than doubled the mentative speed of his
mind and enabled it to do intellective and emotive work with less
than half the former expenditure of energy, chiefly because of the
dropping of parasitic functionings. Mental processes that were
before difficult or impossible became easy.
He found that dirigating to all the faculties concerned in an act,
and to all the organs involved, caused increased aptitude. The
results, he remarked, surprised and delighted him; but they cannot
be properly understood without the previous training. An act
involves a conscious purpose, has an end in view, requires effort,
comprises intellective discernment of the idea of the act and the
objects acted upon, includes esthesic preference that the act be
performed, necessitates a volitional ordering of the performance,
and depends on cooperation of the bodily and subconscious
processes. All these factors must work together. To isolate these
factors introspectively and dirigate to each independently brings
each into undue vividness and augments the dominancy of the part
it plays in the conation. This does not much improve the skill as a
whole, and may even interfere; but dirigatively to train each factor
equally much augments the skill, increases the speed, and
conserves energy. This practice Gates considered one of the most
valuable discoveries of the Mind Art.
But a better result was obtained when he finally dirigated to the
mutual modification of all factors that resulted when they were
simultaneously acting in the synthesis of the conation. He cited as
an example shooting at a target with bow and arrow: the process
was repeated in close succession until he located the feelings
accompanying that conation as a whole, including the feeling of
the whole bodily attitude, every muscular strain, and every mental
operation. This kind of dirigation involved parts of the body and
mind not brought into activity by any of the factors when
separately dirigated, because the coordinated process always
involved other structures and functions than those coordinated. It

required a separate set of associative enregistrations to coordinate,

for instance, sight-memories with speech-memories.
[page 120]
This conative dirigation quickly augmented every desirable factor.
Moreover, when applied to a faculty it promoted originative work
more than any other expedient.
Quiescence and dirigation are proper aids to the mentative
process of inventing, discovering, and learning, Gates warns, only
after all the other elements have been achieved; they are not
substitutes. The intellective activities of sensating, imaging,
conceptuating, ideating, thinking, and reasoning, and the esthesive
and conative processes, are rendered more efficient and normal by
proper dirigation and quiescence. Collection of the actual data of a
science and their proper handling are facilitated and normalized by
dirigation and quiescence and by regulation of bodily and
environmental conditions. These practices are aids that promote
mentation, and do not constitute it.
One of the practical uses is the equalization of one-sidedness in
the mental life; to dirigate activity and blood to other organs than
the ones overworked all day by some particular vocation is often
the only way to rest them.
He found that dirigation could be applied to the introspects of a
group of states. As he explained it: “When the introspects of a
mentative synopsis of a special class of phenomena are dirigated,
those structures of the brain which are functionally involved in
maintaining these memories become the seat of vasomotor,
metabolic, and liberomotor dominancies; and after some hours or
weeks of practice, growth will have taken place, and these
structures will have become subconsciously stimulated for their
tasks. Active functionings of the subconscious kinds
(differentiations and integrations) will occur, and the results will
from time to time be flashed into consciousness. Evanescent and
almost imperceptible shades of meanings and relations will be
discoverable owing to the dirigatively exalted activity of the parts.
Introspection becomes easier because of the greater intensity of the
conscious states in contrast to the adjacent quiescent structures;
and the enthusiasm—entheasm—exaltation of the rapture of
anticipated discovery and new insight increases the
[page 121]
total functioning with reference to this one contemplation. The
whole conscious and subconscious mind in functional reaction
with the cosmic forces tends to produce mental evolution in the
understanding of that class of phenomena contemplated. Growth
takes place, the attention concentrates in those structures which

must function to maintain the comprehension, and this renders

those tissues most sensitive which are most directly concerned. At
the same time the other cerebral structures by correlation of
functioning become less active and more quiescent and anemic, so
the consciousness in contrast acquires a dreamlike vividness;
indistinct changes and shades of consciousness ordinarily
unnoticeable, enter from the great subconscious domain.”
That some of the ideas attained during these special dirigations
should prove true and valuable amazed him. He wrote “That no
one may conclude that I believe these new ideas came out of
nowhere and from nothingness, let me emphatically say that I
know them to be the result of inferences from data already in my
mind, or generalizations and new combinations thereof and better
understandings and insights, and esthesic appreciations and
appraisements of their useful applications. Intending the mind
upon mere vacancy of mental content will not produce new ideas;
re-functioning cannot give results unless there are true data as
conscious states. The new ideas are not ‘drawn out of the ether
where they are stored,’ as one spirited journalist insisted. They are
apperceptive elaborations of mental content, and the results will be
true or false in proportion to the true in the mental content. I know
indubitably that by introspective dirigation I can attain new ideas
on any subject at will by consciously dirigating that cosmic process
which is the basis of my mind; and that new ideas achieved by
subconscious methods were not attributable to any source outside
myself, except insofar as my mind-process is cosmic and part of a
universal process going on outside myself, and of which my mind
is a fractional part. But how does it happen that when the same
data are taught to a number of students there is only an occasional
one
[page 122]
who gets original ideas? It does not follow that because a student
has studied a science he will make discoveries and inventions in it.
Why not? That is just the point I was trying to discover.”
These experiments in dirigation acquainted Gates with new
characteristics of the powers and domains in his mind, and taught
greater skill in introspection. A dirigated sense or higher mental
process became more distinctly differentiated from other processes
with which it was usually more or less associated and confounded.
Hence these experiments led to a new method of introspection, a
third step in his technique, which he called the Newest
Introspection. The first step was attaining a periodicity in bodily
and mental quiescence and in the mental function before
introspecting it. The second step was preliminarily re-functioning
the process; and the new third step was then dirigating that process

into greater vividness. It would then be more easily and accurately

and completely introspected, with many details that would
otherwise escape notice. In this Newest Introspection the
Awareness became a predominant factor the introspective act now
witnessed but did not interfere with what it witnessed.
There were three remarkable degrees of this Newest
Introspection in which the dirigative effect was continued to the
stage that was characterized by the “memorial image,” the “dream-
image,” and the “phasm” (phantasm).
These were steps of great importance toward a more intimate
and extensive knowledge of the mind, preparing the way for
culminating discoveries. Gates had by now become an
introspective specialist (the description of him as a natural
psychologist was a fitting one). He did this work with the utmost
religious seriousness, combined with deeply joyous interest. He
did it with an overflowing zeal and a purpose that recognized no
limitations— “just as well as I could and just as well as I knew
how.”
In this respect he made another psychologic discovery of
deepest significance: that a disapproval (intellective, esthetic,
emotive, moral, religious) with reference to the plans, motives, or
acts bearing upon any line of original thinking, any qualms of
[page 123]
conscience or judgment or taste (justified or not), amounted to an
inhibitive dirigation that diminished or prevented further original
results. Of this he had much direct proof. “A successful
dirigation,” he said, “must be one without disapprovals; hence it
must be based on that which is true, just, and desirable.” The plan
or purpose of dirigative effort must be changed until it does meet
the approvals, he further emphasized; and when every datum of
the plan has been associatively integrated with an approval, and
every datum dropped that does not get approval, then dirigation
will successfully accomplish its purpose according to the abilities
and “Plane” of the person doing it. The method by which a new
truth is revealed is largely a moral achievement, the outcome of
organized aspiration or desire-prayer—not a verbal invocation to a
Being who grants it as a gift, but the direct effect of a natural and
long interest that keeps the mind intended.
Gates found he was getting experiences so uniquely personal
that any serious attempt to explain them to others was useless. He
was able to find but two people who had sufficient repose and
introspective ability to repeat his experiments, and then only a few
of the experiments because of the great amount of time and
practice required. Until the great utility of this line of work
became known, few would ever have enough patience to attempt a

verification in their own minds of his introspective results. He

therefore continued his study of the action of mind on body by
conventional methods that could be more readily verified by
others.
[page 124: blank]

[page 125]
CHAPTER 8
More Mind: Mind-Embodiment
and Brain-Building
We are at last arriving at a physiological basis for a new

education. It is the only one that attacks the real problem in a way
that offers anything like a chance for the settlement of the
educational question, and every day that becomes more pressing.
—A. E. DOLBEAR, Professor of Physics, Tufts College
That the individual could get more mind Elmer Gates did not
doubt, because the progress already made in developing his own
faculties had given him augmented mental ability as well as greater
mental content and capacity. The art of embodying more and
better mind was gradually shaping up as getting greater mental
ability by the psychotaxic trainings, by his concept of “psychal
quantity,” and by his brain-building experiments on animals. It
was of these experimental results that Professor Dolbear wrote so
enthusiastically, in 1895. Quantity or magnitude had not been
applied to the mind, but the discovery of psychal quantity was the
next step in the art of getting more mind. Difference in intensity of
conscious states was one kind, in duration or number another, but
psychotaxic
[page 126]
quantity was a new and special kind of psychal quantity. It has
two factors: width and height of the psychotaxic “pyramid.”
Intellectively the memory-content begins with sensory data out of
which the mind integratively constructs an image of an object; out
of images it segregatively constructs a concept of a group of
objects; by discovering relations between two or more concepts it
arrives at an idea; by finding a generalization true to two or more
ideas it obtains a thought of the first degree; between two or more
thoughts of the first degree it finds a thought of the second degree;
and so on to several higher degrees. (Subperceptual and other
steps are omitted for simplication.) This analysis, previously
described (in Chapter 6), was illustrated in some of Gates’ lectures
by the diagram of the intellective pyramid on the following page.
Referring to the diagram, each of the images (i) arises out of at
least two sensations (s); an image may be considered two steps in
height and two units in width, diagrammatically. Each concept (c)
arises out of at least two images; a concept is three-steps in height
and four units in width. An idea (I) arises out of two concepts,
four images, and at least eight sensations, so an idea is four steps in

height and eight units in width and contains eight units of the first
step, four of the second, two of the third, and one of the fourth. An
image is a larger psychotaxic quantity than a sensation, a con-cept
larger than an image, an idea larger than a concept; and all in the
two senses of width and height. A first-degree thought (T1) arises
out of at least two ideas and is five steps in height and at least
sixteen units in width; a second-degree thought (T2) arises out of
at least two first-degree thoughts and is six steps in height and at
least thirty-two units in width.
To remember an idea is to embody more mind than to
remember a concept. The person who has the greatest number of
true ideas has the most mind as regards ideation, and more
especially so if by Mind Art methods he can ideate more rapidly,
easily, and vividly, and still more especially if he attains more new
and true ideas. A man with a thousand ideas in chemistry
[page 127]

[page 128]
and ten in mathematics and one in electricity has less mind
intellectively than one who has a thousand ideas about each. A
thought represents knowledge about a larger group of phenomena
than does an idea; it covers a larger domain of nature; it represents
a greater complexity of structural change enregistered in the brain
and integratively a higher conscious generalization. I
anatomically, psychologically, and environmentally represents a
smaller quantitive interrelation between the two ideas than would
two such thoughts of equal rank.
“Mind is an adaption of self to environment,” Gates further
explained: “an inward urging and choice of feeling, accompanied

by pleasure and pain, drives and leads; through intellections,

knowledge is gained of things and their relations, of opportunities
and dangers (as interpreted by feeling); and activities are
volitionally carried out which feeling has chosen. Through
environmental stimuli is gained a knowledge of relations to
outward things, and this knowledge, these feelings, these
conations, by which the organism adapts are mental processes—
the capacity is a mental power.”
The discovery of brain-building and mind-embodiment came
about not only because Gates shrank from vivisection but because
he realized that the study of functionalization in the brain of
animals—as then carried out by cutting away part of the brain to
find what mental faculty would be missing or affected—was
certain to lead to wrong conclusions. Cutting out an area of the
cortex would produce pathological and abnormal results, destroy
the circulation to other areas, and cut off connections to them
through tracts of associated fibers. His psychologic research was
planned to answer the questions: Does mind activity make any
observable growth changes in the brain? Does unusual mental
activity produce an unusual structural or chemical difference in
any part of the brain?
He regretted deeply that more was not known about the mind
and its relation to the body. He was “tired of theories,” so he
studied the subject with the aid of the art of mind-using. He
attained the insight that led to the new method of research
[page 129]
and plan of the animal experiments in brain-building. He set to
work to become familiar with anatomy, histology, and microscopy
so as to be ready for the work as soon as he could obtain facilities;
and he sought the help of specialists. This work led to the
discovery of brain-building, which confirmed his judgment that
mind always requires an organism for its manifestation; and
science knows of no instance of mental phenomena occurring
without being manifested by a living body.
His new method of research was to give some individuals of a
selected species of trainable animal an extraordinary training in the
normal use of some one mental function, far beyond that ever
before received by that species; to allow another comparable group
to go untrained, by their usual life; and to deprive another group of
the opportunity to use this function. The brains of these three
groups would then be examined to see if differences in amount of
mental content (or psychal quantity) would produce corresponding
differences in complexity of the brain structure in which these
memories were enregistered. After some consideration he chose a
faculty of which the animal could be deprived without mutilation:

sight. He could make a room from which light could be excluded

(he made the “darkest room in the world” the press reported). It
was not easy to make a soundless room, and there were no other
mental faculties that could be so easily suppressed. After much
preliminary work he chose to work with collies, rabbits, and guinea
pigs.
For example, experiments were made on three groups of collies
by color training. Group A were given an unusual and
extraordinary training of the seeing functions. It took several years
to find out how to do the training. Gates saw after many trials that
the dog must be made to discriminate between as many color
differences as within its mental capacity; that each must be based
on a sight stimulus of just sufficient intensity and duration to make
an adequate sense impression, and be discriminated; that indication
of each must be based on some conscious bodily movement or
conation, for instance the turning over of only green pans in a
collection of many colored ones, all smeared
[page 130]
with fresh meat, to find a bit of meat under them. The dog would
soon learn to turn over only the green pans; then the color would
be changed until all distinguishable steps of the seven primary
colors had been discriminated. Then the hues with their shades
and tints were tested . . . then the least noticeable differences, and
so on.
It took too long to wash the pans to keep them from smelling
(there were a thousand pans in a room thirty-five by ninety feet),
so all were fastened down with meat under them except the
selected color. Another method used colored flap-doors hinged at
the top, with only those of the selected color opening. A variation
for older dogs used colored plaques of metal, like a large
checkerboard, all being charged with an induction coil to give a
slight shock to the dog’s moistened feet except the selected color.
Two collies became proficient in operating a device with piano-
like keys of selected color. For a year-in some cases a year and a
half-the puppies would make fifty to five hundred color
discriminations daily, until one group of six had made over
180,000 as evidenced by correct conations. Gates had to train
himself to keep up with them. Iridescences, opacities,
transparencies, areas of two or three colors, and differently shaped
color areas were also discriminated. He had not trained more than
three classes of dogs when he found they would remember details
in greater number and for a longer time if the color differences
were presented in classific groups according to their physico-
chemical and psychological relations. Certain kinds of mental
activity should be performed at the same periods each day; and a

tired dog did not learn so quickly nor remember so readily as one
with surplus energy; the fatigue point was lowered by
systematically interrupted sleep, and so on.
Group B consisted of eleven collies that had had an ordinary
life on a farm. Group C consisted of four collies, two from one
litter and two from another, whose mothers had been placed in the
darkroom a few weeks before the puppies were born, and they saw
no light for a year and a half.
It was emotionally not easy to have these dogs chloroformed
[page 131]
and killed to have their brains preserved for examination. The art
of making examinations of the cellular structure of brains was in
its infancy; still more so, Gates pointed out, was the chemical
examination of brain tissues, so stains were depended on without
knowing the chemical changes produced. But when two areas
stained differently with the same stain, a chemical difference was
indicated. He fully convinced himself (he was not trying to
convince anyone else) that differences of mind-activity did create
chemical differences in the cellular brain tissues and that dogs of
Group A had a greater number of well-developed pyramidal and
granular (easily seen) brain cells per unit area of cortex in the
region of the cerebellum and of the cuneus than had Group B, and
a far greater number than Group C. At first he considered that a
number of new cells were created, but later he decided that
incipient and undeveloped cells were structurally developed. Of
course some dogs of the same litter inherited more well-developed
brain cells than others, but none inherited as many as a trained dog.
The unavoidable conclusion was that only a few of the inherited
brain-cells in any area are ever developed; most of the mind that
any animal might have developed remains unembodied and most
of the brain undeveloped. In addition, he was certain that beyond
any ordinary internal structural development, these special mind
activities actually created new and additional internal structures,
physical and chemical, in the cell body a conclusion confirmed by
his experiments on unicellular organisms.
Similar trainings with other animals and other functions, and
post-mortem examination of the brains of people who had not used
certain mental functions while alive, led to his conclusion that
conscious mental experiences created in definite parts of the brain
structural enregistrations that were the memories of those
experiences. These experiments showed that mind is causatively
connected with the organism, that the experiences of consciousness
embody themselves as organic structures, that the individual can
by conscious processing be given more brains and more mind.

[page 132]
Gates took pains to point out that these researches were made
when he had experimental facilities of the most meager kind, but
just sufficient. He wished to make it clear that the Mind Art was
based on established fact and experience and was not necessarily
dependent on any interpretation of his. “The art of mentation,” he
wrote, “was developed and practiced before I had any knowledge
of brain-building; and it has no necessary connection with the
value or verity of the mentative methods. Had these experiments
on animals never been made, the main practical outline of the
Mind-art would have been formulated, and in nearly the same way,
from my experimental studies of each kind of mental ability in
myself and others while engaged in successful kinds of mental
work, and my inventory of total rememberable content of minds.
“The logical principle of consistence has been strongly operative,
and many other converging lines of evidence have since led to the
same conclusions. However, my brain-building experiments
enabled me to explain to my satisfaction how the getting of more
mind and brain takes place. Further study may modify some of my
corollaries, but I do not think that the general conclusion that mind
activity differentiates and integrates nervous structures and thus
embodies itself in structure, will be modified.”
Whatever the interpretation, he further concluded that
functional activity produces structural growth and every conscious
mental activity produces molecular and structural changes in the
brain and other parts of the organism that are revivable as a
memory; that memories belonging to the same class are
enregistered approximately in the same parts of the brain, thus
creating more structural mind-embodiment in those parts; that
those parts can be associatively integrated into wholes, including
memories of all kinds of knowledge and all departments of nature,
making a comprehensive mind and personality. Each group of
associatively integrated memories thus added to the brain is the
acquisition of more mind and better mind-organs, and the basis
from which to educe a moral disposition and attain all the higher
powers of mind.
[page 133]
Gates first tentatively described his results in 1890 (fifteen
years after starting his studies), explained them more fully in 1892
and 1893, and first lectured publicly and published interviews in
1894. Extensive press notices showed the widespread interest of
the public.
One of the first confirmations of his results came from Europe
in 1894. (Dr. Aurelio Lui, of Professor Stephano’s laboratory in
Milan, published researches showing that as animals acquire more

skill and experience in walking there is a corresponding increase of

certain cellular elements in the cerebrum.) But the main
confirmation came from the rapid progress of physiology, notably
from the observations of practicing physicians, Gates wrote
thirteen years later. One of them, W. Hanna Thompson, Brains
and Personality, Dodd, Mead, 1907, concluded:
“As none of these mental faculties, including speech, were

connected with the brain-matter at birth, it follows that they
were created by the individual himself anatomically modifying
his own brain. . . .Here surely we come upon a most impressive
fact; namely, that by constant repetition of a given stimulus we
can effect a permanent anatomical change in our brain stuff,
which will add a specific and remarkable cerebral function to
that Place which it never had before....Another important
conclusion is that we can make our brains, so far as special
mental functions or aptitudes are concerned, if only we have
the wills strong enough to take the trouble.”
It is mental activity, as well as survival of the fittest, that

develops structures in brain and body, Gates further remarked. It
is not mere physical activity of the bodily organs: it is the mental
activity of discriminating between the touches, pressures, muscular
feelings, tints, shades and hues, and other stimuli that produces the
increase in structural elements of the cortex and the rest of the
body. Gates found that when a person had attained a certain
capacity, or limit, in discriminating, after several
[page 134]
times repeating that limit during a practice period and waiting a
day, he could improve his performance and could discriminate a
smaller difference. For example, if he could distinguish a shade of
red that was 4 per-cent darker than the original red shade but could
not quite distinguish a shade only 3 percent darker he found that he
could after practice discriminate a little less than this 1 percent
difference, perhaps 1/10-1/20 percent less. The amount depended
on his mental quality and training. If this improved discrimination
was repeated several times, and a day allowed to pass, on the next
trial another step could be taken, and so on, each becoming a
temporary standard of skill and serving as a new starting point.
Gates considered he had amply demonstrated this law of
development of “discriminative capacity,” which was the kind of
mind activity that would create additional cellular structures in the
brain, and was the basis for skill-trainings.
This study of the effects of mind on organism led him to
discover the relationship between morphology and mental

activities. With limited facilities he studied the effect of selective

propagation upon lower organisms. He produced rapid structural
evolution by the method followed by horticulturists, so well
described by Wallace and Darwin, but with a wholly different
purpose: to note what mental activities arose with the appearance
of structural changes. He likewise produced retrogression and
noted the disappearance of mental activities with the disappearance
of structures. It was the first time that experimental evolution had
been applied to psychologic experiment; it was a study of
psychogenesis. When variation is produced by survival, an
adaptation may be produced that is not necessarily a higher order
of mind. For instance, an infusorian born with a thicker and more
pigmented skin on its back would be protected from a severity of
light that destroyed others of that group. When it was allowed to
propagate into millions of individuals, and then all were destroyed
except for a few by increasing the intensity of light, after some
generations the result was a carapace, or shell-like covering, fitting
those surviving individuals to live in that
[page 135]
particular environment without giving them increased mental
capacity. When, however, those individuals were successively
saved that could most quickly get out of the intense light projected
upon them, a species was produced that was capable of surviving
because of mental superiority. This was the true kind of evolution,
by the acquisition of normal mental content and skill in
overcoming adverse environmental conditions; and it consisted in
learning introspectively the truth about the opportunities and
dangers of the environment, in feeling emotionally its utility,
beauty, and other qualities, and in conatively realizing or acting out
the truth of such knowledge. That is, evolution is mind-
embodiment regulated by knowledge. Gates clearly saw by this
line of research based on many experiments with lower organisms
that evolution could be rationally directed and not left to the more
chaotic and slower methods of survival of the fittest. Some of his
experiments described in the lecture before the Philosophical
Society of Washington in 1894 were appreciated by many of his
audience—Lester Ward, for instance, who paid tribute to him from
the floor, praising the importance and novelty of his work.
That mental content is an initiative factor in evolution was a
conclusion that Gates considered important additional evidence of
mind-embodiment. When an animal by accidental variation
acquires new mental aptness of any kind, or is forced to cope with
new kinds of enemies or opportunities or environment, it thereby
acquires a new class of mental experience. This is a new kind of
mental content between the elements of which relations and

associations arise, giving new judgments, impulses, and motives,

thus modifying its reaction to the environment. This mental
content, containing new facts, images, concepts, and ideas, is a
new source of activities by which adaptations are made differently
from before. It is the mind-factor in evolution, causative of
progress, of morphology through modified nervous growth.
Gates was also impressed by his conclusion that cells are the
psychologic as well as the anatomic units of an organism. His
[page 136]
experiments demonstrated that cells are alive because they can feel
stimuli and adapt acts to ends; since only mind has this property,
cells, then, have minds and are alive because of it. The functioning
of an organ consists in the combined functionings of its cells, and
these function mentally. To change the functioning of an organ it
is therefore necessary to modify the mentation of its individual
cells.
His conviction that evolution is mind-embodiment (as pointed
out in his article in the Monist, July 1895, for instance) was the
outcome of long-continued investigation, and was a fruitful
influence in his work. He once expressed it this way: “External
stimuli could have no evolutionary effect upon a dead thing; it can
produce response only in a thing that is alive. That which in a cell
responds is that which can feel and adapt, and that is a mental
characteristic. This response is a self-activity, that is, a mental
activity, and when repeated produces structural change in the cell.
Hence, it is not the stimulus that produces growth, but the activity
that responds and adapts. To increase the functional differentiation
involves the concomitant differentiation in the functioning organ;
else functions could exist without structures. The whole course of
evolution is an ascending anatomical complexity of organism
corresponding to the ascending psychological complexity of
functioning.
“My experiments show that when two groups of cellular
organisms of the lowest kind were caused to functionate in
response to two kinds of stimuli different structural changes arose
in them, according as their mental activities differed. There is also
conclusive pathological evidence that lesion of certain parts of the
brain produces loss of certain memories; that is, memories are
physically embodied, and therefore consciousness by accumulating
experience builds brain and mind simultaneously. More mind is
always accompanied by more structure. Evolution is mind-
embodiment; increased mental capacity is always accompanied by
an equally augmented structural complexity. More mind is the
goal of evolution. To get more mind and learn how to use it seems
to be the fundamental opportunity and duty and

[page 137]
purpose of life. To get less and less mind and to gradually lose the
power to use it is the direct opposite of all hope and aspiration.
“When the actual knowledge-data of a science have been
collected and learned, then the mental training of the intellective
functions in that domain can be properly undertaken; and the next
step in the biological growth of that brain, the next step in the
psychological growth of that mind, in the evolutionary progress of
the race in that science, and in the logical development of that
science, will be one and the same. It will be practically impossible
for a pupil not to take that step if he apply the mentative art. In
these principles we have the educational curriculum outlined.”
Mind-embodiment, or brain-building, consists in the
enregistration of psychotaxic data as intellective mental content, as
esthesic content, and as conative habits and skills. It is one of the
cornerstones of an improved education, Gates emphasized. Every
remembered conscious experience that the mind gets with itself or
with environment is a datum; and if such data are psychologically
classified, they are psychotaxic data. Through psychotaxic mind-
building the individual gets more mind, in the sense not only of
increased number of elements in cells and fibers that alone
constitute a mind-mechanism but also of a more normal and
taxonomic mind. Mind-building is comprised of the up-building of
the intellect, the feelings and emotions, and the voluntary habits.
Intellect-building consists in causing consciousness to acquire
by its own direct experience the psychotaxic data of the sciences in
such a way as to enregister the corresponding memory structures in
the brain, thus producing an efficient mentating machine. This
method produces a normal mind whose memory content consists in
data and brain-structures that are properly arranged
(psychotaxically) instead of being chaotically jumbled together,
and of conscious states that are true instead of largely false and
theoretical. Intellect-building consists in learning the psychotaxic
data of a science in a properly equipped laboratory
[page 138]
capable of showing the phenomena in psychotaxic groups, in such
a way that the pupil will systematically enregister all the sensory
and image data as brain-structures and as intellective states; then in
enregistering the concepts, then the ideas, and then the thoughts.
The pupil will learn nothing dogmatically. He will know from his
own experience every fact of that science.
Acquisition of the data of a psychotaxic science is in reality the
embodiment of more mind. If it were possible to remove its total
mental content, there would be no mind left. In most minds a large

part is wholly false, mythical, theoretical, and useless (or

unclassified and thus not available for use). By a properly
arranged pedagogic outfit of psychotaxic apparatus, his
investigations convinced Gates that all the sensations, images,
concepts, and ideas of a science could be inductively acquired in so
short a time “that it would only arouse disbelief to say how short.”
No theory or hypothesis would be used; all known facts would be
acquired; and the pupil would be skillfully familiar with all the
practical technique.
Esthesis-building consists in acquiring the normal feelings,

emotions, and sentiments in the same manner. Conation-training is
acquiring efficiency and skill in the acts by which knowledge is
applied to achieving one’s purposes.
The main value of these discoveries lies in their application to
an education that will fit the student for an actual life of usefulness
and happiness, Gates emphasized. Before anything is ready to be
taught, it must first be tested by all known methods to determine to
what extent it is true. Is it a fact? And does the learning of it fit
the pupil for discovering other facts, and for an everyday life?
Consequently some training should consist in the art of testing
knowledge as to its truth, in selecting motives as to their value, and
in performing the technical part of his vocation. Then the pupil
will be ready for a more direct culture of the esthesic faculty to
augment the joys of life, using them as means as well as ends.
Throughout the whole course of development of the Mind
[page 139]
Art, Gates recognized that the intellective and even the esthesic
processes and states were the outgrowth of an organized and
instinctive conatus that is itself an organically specialized form of a
cosmic conatus. It became more and more evident that this will to
live—this vis a tergo and vis a fronte of life—can be led to create
still other mental faculties; that the main use of intellection is to
guide this conatus in marshaling the conscious and subconscious
processes; and that all processes promotive of life and truth will
become pleasurable and can by training more rapidly be made so.
The diagram of the intellections earlier in this chapter shows
the taxonomic range of a simple second-degree thought. If another
similar one were placed beside it, and still others representing first
or second-degree thoughts, the base of the pyramid would thus
widen to include gradually all the phenomena of a science or one
domain of nature. If the next higher superunit of a thought were
discovered, it would increase the height of the pyramid, and this is
the Mind Art way of extending knowledge. If the investigator

were to prefer one portion of the pyramid, he would be developing

his brain and mind in a one-sided manner, and results would not
represent a logical or taxonomic whole. The whole scope of each
science should, so far as possible, be developed to a uniform
degree. When the pyramid of each science shall have been
completed and the higher units of each combined into still higher
units and finally into one generalization, there will result a
philosophy. A group of mentators among whom a division of
labor has taken place may, if they represent the leading minds of
the world, hope to arrive at something like a true philosophy or a
synthetic science, but that philosophy win extend no further than
the taxonomic range of actual knowledge.
An early account of the Mind Art is given in part of a letter
Gates wrote in 1883, at age twenty-four, to Dr. William T. Harris,
editor of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy and later U.S.
Commissioner of Education.
“The Mind-art or Mentative Art is the art of more skillfully
using the mind in learning, demonstrating, and discovering more
[page 140]
knowledge, in teaching and learning the sciences and arts, in
making inventions and doing creative work, in enjoying and
training the feelings and emotions, in acquiring the skills for any
specialty, in making a livelihood, and in doing those things for
which we have special tastes or ambitions, in living a longer and
more complete and happier life. More especially it is the art of
getting more mind and learning how to use it more effectively. It
is applying the principles of evolution to the individual, and it is,
(ambitious program!) taking evolution in hand and directing it. . . .
“The law of evolution is implicit in the biologic and
psychologic data upon which the Mind-art is based but it is an
extended conception in which the mental content is a causal factor;
and the embodiment of more mind and the attainment of its own
peculiar satisfaction and development of higher satisfaction are
some of the goals. Mind-embodiment in one of its basic phases
involves the acquisition of approximately an equal amount of
knowledge from each of the sciences if one would be mentally
well balanced; and being Bacon-like, the Mind-art says: ‘I have
taken all knowledge for my province,’ and each devotee will
attempt to live up to that ideal to the extent of his abilities, and will
specialize in the sciences and arts which relate to his tastes,
livelihood, and predilective career. The mentator will, in learning
the sciences, be embodying mind intellectually; he will also wish
to normalize his feelings (esthesias) and acquire a full fund of
them; and he will want to acquire all the practical arts and skills
insofar as he needs them in making a living and attaining his

higher self-development and for doing some service to humanity.

He will want more knowledge and more mind and more life, a
good moral and ethical character, an all-around and able
personality from which immoral and unethical dispositions have
been eliminated and he will, for guidance and success, want skill in
original ideation and thought.
“The Mind-art requires a new taxonomy or classification of
living beings based on their degrees of mental evolution and
corresponding degrees of structural development of their nervous
[page 141]
system—a classification involving the entire range of mental
differentiation and integration known to bacteriology, biology, and
zoology; also a graded classification of mental states, processes,
and persons.”
Dr. Harris wanted to publish this letter but Gates declined, not
being ready to come before the public at that time. Later Harris
wrote to Gates: “I have a great interest in your labors and great
faith in your powers to discover and demonstrate valuable facts
and principles in physiological-psychology. We now have the
beginnings of a scientific art of research and may expect
psychology to increase in importance.”
[page 142: blank]

[page 143]
CHAPTER 9
Steps Toward an Art of Discovery
How much higher a thing to discover that by means of which

all things else shall be discovered. . . . I must admit the possibility
that the art of discovery will advance as discoveries advance.
—Francis Bacon (d. 1626)
It is obviously of more importance to learn how best to utilize

that which creates all science than to achieve any given
discoveries. It is far more important to teach the art of making
inventors than to make any given number of inventions.
—ELMER GATES (d. 1923)
The span of three hundred years from Francis Bacon had

indeed produced many discoveries, but undiscovered was the art of
making them, nor was it considered the most useful
accomplishment or goal.
Gates wrote: “If I had been trying to establish a reputation I
would have done more with my successful experiments than
convince myself. I saw a mighty goal and with almost bated
breath hastened on, knowing full well the value. What avail even a
dozen reputations, or hundreds of discoveries in the sciences, or
thousands of inventions in the arts if thereby I were to lose the one
main and significant result of my life’s effort,
[page 144]
that knowledge about Consciousness and Mind which I knew that I
knew how to discover. I hurried night and day for over 33 years in
order that I might find and demonstrate the fundamental method of
social progress, which I from the first have known to consist of the
mental methods of discovering, validating, learning, and applying
knowledge to industry and character. Of what else could it
consist?”
It had long been his desire to devote his life to the kind of
activity that would make the most useful contribution to the human
race. To be done any real good, the race, he believed, must be
taught how to avoid want, ignorance, and misery. It would require
the best effort of the two billion people living to reform the world,
and the practical questions were, How can we best induce them to
put forth the effort at self-improvement? and, What kind of self-
improvement shall they be taught? The answers were not in doubt.
The fundamental way to teach a man to help himself is to teach
him how to more efficiently and correctly use his mind in
discovering and applying truth. The way to induce him is to train

him into an acquaintance with his mind so as to understand it both

subjectively and objectively.
Because Gates realized this, his motto became: “Get more
mind and learn how best to use it in discovering and applying truth
to the betterment of life and its environment.” His confidence in
the art of mentation was based not only on its performance but on
what the method was destined to accomplish: “It rationalizes,
systematizes, and vastly extends that method; it does more—it
improves, extends, and accelerates the mental capacity by which
this method, or any method, must be applied; and it reduces to a
scientific art the process of discovery itself. Moreover this art
contains within itself the method by which it will perpetually be
improved.” So he considered his maturing Mind Art.
Throughout the later stages of his previous researches he had
frequently and forcibly observed that fatigue prevented certain
results, Numerous
[page 145]
experiments proved, for example, that doing mental work at a
temperature that would allow the least loss of heat from the body
conserved energy; that a poorly masticated meal wasted energy in
digestion; that all noticed or unnoticed sensory disturbances
lowered the fund of energy; that every unpleasant emotion took
energy to maintain; and that every emotion or feeling that did not
directly contribute to the daily work was a loss of available energy,
as was every muscular movement and conscious state not needed.
“Aghast” at the realization that on the average fully 90 percent of
his available vital energy was wasted, Gates sought methods to
conserve it. His conclusion from many studies was that the first
condition of efficient, normal, and vivid mental activity, especially
of the higher functions, is available surplus vital energy; and
especially that the body and mind be so trained as to have an
augmented capacity for quickly generating superabundant
energy.whereas originative work was more frequent and of a
higher order with a plentiful supply of vital energy.
As noted, this required an environment that had been selected
and regulated to promote and not hinder mental activity, and the
inhibition and dropping by quiescence-habits of useless
movements and mental activities. More especially, it required a
regularly active life that led to the daily generation of sufficient
energy for the maximum needs of that day. Most important, the
body must be trained to create just a little more daily energy than
was required for the largest amount of work ever done in a day.
On days when less was done, nearly all the surplus should be used
in sportive exercise or amusements to maintain the habit of

creating the daily maximum. Its attainment had to be gradual to

avoid strain.
A strain was harmful, requiring a long recovery time, and
involving disabled muscles or paresis. It predisposed to further
strain, and established a limit that was passed with difficulty and
danger unless guarded by scientific methods. Prolonged overwork
and severe strain could result in permanent decrease in efficiency.
To avoid strains there was the infallible guide of fatigue.
Fatigue is always a psychologic signal of physiologic distress
foreboding danger to tissues and functions. Any activity actually
[page 146]
fatigued should be rested to full recuperation, then gradually put to
work again. Introspection of work of various kinds carried to
prodromatic fatigue enabled Gates to detect its prodromata and
stop further work before actual fatigue was felt, for then the
damage had begun.
A certain degree of tired feeling at the end of the day was the
normal condition; but “tired” means only strong prodromata of
fatigue. The sleepy feeling was different. Sleep is not only for
getting rid of this tired feeling but for recuperating. During sleep
the metabolic processes eliminate waste and repair wasted tissue
until midnight or about 2 A.M., and then the constructive
metabolism of further growth begins. If one retired too late or too
tired, then the recuperative metabolism might not be completed
before morning and retrogression might take place; that kind of
subconscious growth which takes place between periods of
practice would be prevented.
The proper regulation of sleep was essential to the conservation
and production of vital energy, and the sleep should not be
disturbed by dreams. Always on days following a dream-disturbed
sleep Gates found his fatigue point lower and mental work
diminished in amount and quality. In further studies he found that
persons of the same race, age, and sex required amounts of sleep
that varied with the kind and amount of work done during the day,
the muscular tensions and mental strains consciously or
subconsciously maintained, the time of retiring and rising, and the
kind and amount of subjective or objective disturbances during
sleep. As a rule he found it well to retire early, soon after
sundown, and arise and go to work as soon as awakening in the
morning.
With the application of these principles and his improved
techniques, Gates discovered “re-functional training” the continual
re-functioning of the psychotaxic data of a science was training the
corresponding intellective processes to a higher efficiency. When
well rested, well nourished, and well slept, to have superabundant

energy, at the same time every day, he refunctioned the sensory

states relating to the phenomena of a
[page 147]
scientific domain (re-imaging the images), systematically going
through his synopsis or list from first to last, and introspecting
every step. This gave his mind extraordinary and hitherto
unknown skill, constituting a sensory training, or an art of
sensating and an art of imaging. Likewise he re-conceptuated the
concepts and re-ideated the ideas, introspecting every step, which
gave an art of conceptuating and an art of ideating. In the same
manner he formulated an art of thinking (of the several degrees of
generalization), giving more power and skill in the processes of
thought, especially originative thinking. Finally he re-functioned
the introspects to get increased introspective powers and skill,
setting the whole conatus to work, giving an art of introspective
training and functioning.
This practice gave not only a new dispensation of knowledge
about the mind but a new kind and degree of intellectuating skill
and efficiency, amounting to a higher power in intellection. This
was a real art of intellectuating (which he named noeturgics), a
structural development and functional training of the very acts and
processes by which the intellect knows and discovers. It was in
striking contrast to all mental “disciplines,” he pointed out, but
embodied the good in all. By this training the mental states
became more vivid, much more clearly minted and complete,
while the processes of states acquired much greater celerity and
efficiency.
Not only did this procedure strengthen and promote the speed
of the intellective process, but perhaps even more important, it
taught how to use the intellective processes separately and
independently of each other or all others—how to image without
conceptuating or ideating, to conceptuate without imaging or
ideating, to ideate without conceptuating or imaging, and to think
without at the same time doing any of the lower intellective
processes. Thus, he observed, for the first time in the history of
education it became possible, by means of this training, to use the
intellective processes separately. So far as he knew, such a use had
never even been “dreamed of.”
His next important step was the discovery of “mentative
[page 148]
dominancies.” When the psychotaxic data of a science had been
enregistered in his mind, he had acquired a special kind of mental
content, and if larger than any other group of data in his mind and
of greater interest, it might be said to be a dominant group. When

by quiescence, refunctioning, dirigation, and their corresponding

techniques of introspection he began to get the data functionally
dominant, he was creating a mentative dominancy. Furthermore,
when introspected, this group of data became still more dominant
in his attention. This dominancy exercised a functional influence
over all other parts of his brain, and that subject was dominant over
all others. There was produced an unusual degree of originality for
him, and an increased productiveness and augmented ability in that
line of knowledge and skill. He noted with amazement and delight
that this practice created in him the conditions and capacities of
genius within that domain. He saw he had discovered not only a
new and superior way to carry on a scientific investigation and do
creative and inventive work but the way to create a genius. The
genius-capacities thus created would be healthy, natural, normal,
and not one-sided. As soon as the mind thus yielded its fruitage on
any subject, it should not be forced to try for more along that line,
as is almost invariably done, but its activities should be shifted to
another subject, thus creating a genius-dominancy of another kind
and allowing the former one to subside.
Further studies of dominancies gave a clear understanding of
the relations of their various kinds, such as intellective, emotive,
and subconscious; when they should be used separately,
cooperatively, or successively. This clear knowledge of the relation
of functional dominancies was of utmost importance to the Mind
Art.
The main results so far in his lifework Elmer Gates
summarized as follows:
A New Method of Studying and Validating Judgments

Judgment Training
Leadings and Insights Regarding the Mind
[page 149]
Quiescence
The New Introspection
Physiologic and Psychologic Rest
Mentative Periodicities
Bodily and Environmental Influence on Mentation
Periodicity and Prognosis
Re-functioning
The Newer Introspection
Total Mental Content
Psychotaxis
Dirigation
The Newest Introspection
Surplus Vital Energy

Re-functional Training (Art of Intellectuating)

Mentative Dominancies
Discovery of the Nature and Modus Operandi of Genius
These discoveries were almost instinctively combined in his

practice, constituting a synthesis of methods of mind-using relating
especially to the art of discovery by which the originality of the
mind was promoted and efficiently directed, and a greater amount
of creative work done than otherwise. So far as then developed he
described it as an art of cerebrating, of intellectuating, of
introspecting, and of handling data to achieve a greater number of
new ideas that would prove true than would otherwise occur to his
mind. He practiced this art “assiduously,” and rapidly made other
discoveries tending toward its improvement.
These researches were devoted to a study of mental processes
and the art of using them. The result was far more than could have
been anticipated, the achievement being due more to method than
to ability. When results were carefully coordinated, he found he
had really formulated a scientific system of arts for using the mind
and that this mentative art was scientific method. He began to
realize that all successfully adapted mentation according to
guidance of knowledge, instead of the not-knowledge of the past,
is scientific method. Applying it to the mind and
[page 150]
consciousness was his career, and he had been applying scientific
method to its own improvement.
“I knew with serene and exalted conviction and with over-
whelming impulse-to-do,” Gates wrote, “that I had at last found
myself and my lifework. I had to rest a few weeks to take it all in
and accustom myself to a wonderful terminus of my researches; a
terminus which is but a source of endless new beginnings. I need
not dilate and explain, words are useless. Life has afforded me
many happy hours, but only one that was more exalting and intense
than when I first fully understood that there had been created and
evolved a practical art of more skillfully and efficiently using the
mind and utilizing Consciousness by scientific method embodied
and incarnate.”
He applied the Mind Art to invention and discovery in different
domains to study mentative methods. He found after a time that the
brain would cease to produce new results; then he would take up
some other class of ideas, allowing the former functionings to rest
and ripen more fruit. This alternation of subject cured unbalanced
dominancies and one-sidedness; this systematic functioning of all
brain centers in turn he later found to be the cure for brain fatigue
and the evil effects of lopsidedness in genius, monomanias, and

such abnormalities. The ideal mental development is an equable

one, achieved by acquiring an approximately equal amount of
psychotaxic data from each of the six great groups of sciences.
Then a rotation of mental crops is possible, and the pathological
condition resulting from overwork is obviated.
He described some of the first steps of method—the first
“Level”—by the following example: In applying this mentative art
to discovery in a particular science, such as acoustics, he found it
essential first to re-acquire the intellective data inductively, and
several times to re-functionate the memories and mind-activities
relating to the subject. To do this most effectively he considered
that a complete “laboratory-museum” of that science was required.
In its absence he visited shops, museums, and laboratories so that
by systematic observation and experiment
[page 151]
he could, so far as possible, repeat the sensations, images,
concepts, and ideas of that science to place its actual knowledge
vividly in mind, without admixture of theories, speculations, and
hypotheses. He found that the latter could not be elements in the
intellective diagram, as they would vitiate the whole
superstructure. To acquire the science, he emphasized, it was
necessary to be inductively shown in classific groups every object
and phenomenon of that science, then by Mind Art methods get
correct images, concepts, an ideas systematically to create
psychotaxic brain-structures. This caused that part of the universe
represented by that science to be, as he said, anatomically,
physiologically, and psychologically active in his brain. With his
eleven (more or less) sensory capacities he examined every
possible object and phenomenon of acoustics to get correct images
of objects, correct concepts of groups of objects, and true ideas of
their interactions and relations, taking nothing on authority,
rejecting all theories and hypotheses, and re-functioning his
memories of actual facts only. These data were psychologically
classified into sensory, imagive, conceptual, ideative, and so on.
At first he, for several months, re-sensated all the sensations,
exercising them just at the point of their least discriminable
capacities, thus training the attention and developing a smaller just-
noticeable-difference, making the senses more vivid, accurate, and
sensitive. In like manner, an hour or two daily for several months
he spent re-imaging the images (recollecting or bringing into
memory the images of an object), from the beginning to end of the
list-re-visualizing them, re-audializing them, re-tangializing them,
and so on with all the other senses. This practice made the
corresponding parts of the brain functionally active, sending more
blood, increasing metabolism and elimination, augmenting their

growth and functional capacities, causing (after several weeks of

continuous practice) the digestive and respiratory systems through
corresponding appetites and hungers to supply the blood with the
kind of nutrients best adapted to promote that kind of functioning,
intensifying the conscious states constituting these images, and
greatly increasing the imaging speed and accuracy.
[page 152]
All this constituted an art of imaging. This procedure was repeated,
again and again, for six weeks (under the predetermined optimum
conditions of body and environment), until he could go through the
list in one tenth the time, the images being more vivid and the
effort less. Those that required more effort or were less vivid were
re-imaged to be equal.
In like manner, several hours daily for three or four months
were spent re-conceptuating the concepts of the list, making those
parts of the brain and subcerebral ganglia grow and giving a new
kind of skill in an art of conceptuating. Then he related each
concept to the others, which gave many new and true ideas (to be
temporarily recorded until experimentally verified). Every new
concept always implied a number of new ideas; and for the first
time, to relate new concepts was always a rich opportunity for new
ideas. When the various processes of imaging, conceptuating,
ideating, and thinking led to no further results, he would by
introspecting get a series of introspect-memories of the acoustical
data; then by introspective dirigation he would call into activity the
subconscious processes, and almost always, after several days or
weeks, one or more new insights, methods of research, or
generalizations would arise.
This re-functioning of images made the corresponding nervous
structures grow in strength. It was obvious that “botanic” images,
for instance, were concerned with a different set of brain-structures
than “chemical” images, else differences of function could take
place in similar structures. Conceptuating involved different
structures than imaging, or the same ones in different ways. In
either case conceptuating produced a different set of structural
growths than imaging; and so with ideating and thinking. While he
was thus engaged, there would spontaneously or apperceptively
occur new concepts, ideas, and thoughts, which were the first kind
of results from the mentative process. The brain was permitted to
bear its normal fruitage without trying to force the mind into ruts
and specialties as is usually done, but by allowing it its own time
and way. When the mind by its own spontaneous inductive,
differentiative, and integrative growth

[page 153]
produced no more new ideas and thoughts, he then applied to the
mentative data the deductive ratiocinative process. Many new
ideas and thoughts resulted, but being deductive, only those were
recorded in his synopsis that could be inductively verified.
Next he introspectively dirigated to those intellections relating
to the subject, and after several days the subconscious processes
produced various results, such as new concepts, ideas, thoughts, or
methods of experimental investigation. Then he again applied
deductive reasoning to each concept, idea, and thought. Many
deductions resulted, to be verified by observation and experiment.
Carrying out this mentative process required constant
experimental investigation. He went over the new ground
experimentally and got many additional data; many new
phenomena afforded new sensations, images, and concepts. Each
new concept was then experimentally related to each one
previously in the list, thus affording new ideas. This enlarged
synopsis was again taken up in the same way to obtain more data,
and so on.
This re-functioning of the conscious states constituting the
psychologically classified data of the science was a wholly new
kind of intellective training, and taken in connection with the
memory-content that was re-functioned, it produced a psychologic
dominancy of that psychotaxic group of conscious states in the
mind as a whole, and a physiologic dominancy of the
corresponding brain-structures and other bodily organs, creating a
mentative dominancy of that science in that mind. This was the
practical condition of creative and productive genius, during which
the mind had superior powers along that line and made important
discoveries and inventions. This is the modus operandi of genius,
by which it is taken out of the haphazard modes of nature and
systematized.
Gates found it extremely difficult to explain this art of
discovery without many special technical terms that could be
understood only from a systematic exposition learned with
laboratory work.
The above example describes the first Level of the art of
[page 154]
discovery; he used other Levels, not only intellectual ones but
similar psychotaxes and re-functionings and dirigations and
dominancies relating to the feelings and emotions (Uplifts, as he
technically termed them), and to the voluntary functionings and
efforts (Powers). In this way the capacities of genius, so
frequently dormant, are scientifically augmented, developed, and
utilized; instead of being hampered by false beliefs and wrong

methods, they are rendered effective by rational method and

scientific knowledge and trained mental processes. In this way the
mind of genius need no longer be one-sided and unbalanced, or
pathologic by overworking one group of brain-organs, with disuse
of others.
In every step of this art there is constant practical reference that
mentation cannot be produced by the brain alone. Every moment
of conscious activity is the product of the physical and
psychological interaction of the individual with his total cosmic
environment, Gates reiterated. Let the pupil understand it is the
Cosmic Process that is doing the thinking, the understanding, the
introspecting, the willing, during any given lesson or experimental
work. In the whole history of the sciences Gates was unable to
find a single instance of the discovery of scientific knowledge
except as the result of the mental processes of those who made the
discoveries. He was able to trace the genesis of every discovery
and invention of his to the conscious or subconscious apperceptive
elaboration of the mental content that he had acquired.
He found that these ideas were not necessarily true because
they were new. They were modified by the accuracy of the data,
and especially they were colored, interpreted, and vitiated by his
theories and beliefs. This was his first insight that hypotheses and
theories were not the best guides to experimental research.
Instead, he found that an inductive study should be made of
verifiable data. The truth of new ideas depends on accuracy of the
mental data and normality of the mental process, and on letting
new ideas accumulate without reference to proving or disproving
anything. The subconscious processes, directed largely
[page 155]
by predilection, simply differentiated and integrated in accordance
with the nature of the mind whatever had been presented to them,
and apperceptively elaborated conclusions that were generally apt
to be a little more correct than original data but always colored and
shaped by them.
He again began the study of a special subject by these methods,
and found that false images, wrong concepts, and untrue ideas of
outward things as well as inward processes were capable of wholly
misleading the judgment, and that hypothesis and theory were not
the right kind of mental content for invention and discovery. He
therefore set to work again on this question of collecting data; he
recorded no scientific datum unless personally verified by
experiment, and classified his data psychotaxically. He firmly
resolved, as far as was in his power, not to be misled by any false
statements, unproved beliefs, theories or hypotheses. He was
confronted with a task both “vast and difficult” but began the work

of getting together not merely the axioms and “Eternal Truths” in

the manner of Descartes but more particularly the demonstrable
facts of several sciences, and to that work he never ceased to
devote part of his time.
Having arranged a brief psychotaxis of his collected and
verified data of several sciences—“most fragmentary and
imperfect”—he applied the process of mentation and found a
greater number of true results than before.
This practice led to the beginnings of his “askeotechnical”
method of bringing successively into consciousness each datum in
the list to systematically include in the re-functioning and
introspective dirigation all the known data in taxonomic order,
beginning with the simpler intellective integrants and proceeding
toward the more complex, to avoid mixing the different degrees of
generality in the same conscious process; that is, to finish imaging
before taking up ideation, and so on.
But this systematic handling of each datum had a long
antecedent in his early practices. It had been his custom to pick
up, for instance, a book on physics (then called “natural
philosophy”), and taking each fact by itself, try to discover
interesting
[page 156]
new relations to each other fact in the entire book; and his
laborious efforts had often been rewarded. Thus starting with
some concept, he would in turn attempt to think out, reason out, or
ideate out new relationships of this phenomenon, law, or force to
each other one in the book—such as gravity to mechanical power,
speed, sound, heat, radiant energy, and so on; and many new and
true ideas resulted.
He would also apply each statement or principle to each one of
the arts to see if it could improve any methods or tools, and his
success was not only frequent but sometimes interesting and
valuable. He would hold in mind an improvement needed by some
art and look through a book on physics, reflecting inventively upon
each statement, to see if he could devise the desired improvement,
and often succeeded. He observed that this process made him
quite familiar with physics, and gave an equable knowledge of, and
interest in, all parts, and produced greater mental readiness and
originality. But more particularly this practice led to combining
the method of going reflectively through books with other steps in
systematic intellection, such as re-imaging the images.
When he concluded that he had achieved the beginning of a
systematic formulation of an art of using the mind, he was so filled
with the joy of discovery that his enthusiasm almost constantly led
to over-work, and several times he nearly broke down through not

heeding hygiene and physiology and his own psychologic

teachings. He would not take sufficient time to eat meals properly
and would often forget them, would sleep only a few hours, and
was twice threatened with dyspepsia. But he soon learned that he
could get along more rapidly by obeying the laws of health, which
is one of the unavoidable rules of a successful Mind Art.
He summed up a practical synthesis to more effectively
practice the art of mind-using. He saw that his earlier insights
were now justified by results. He so arranged his laboratory that
interruptions and disturbances were practically eliminated. By
special devices he supplied his study with purer water and air
[page 157]
than otherwise, and provided himself with a larger variety of
agreeable-tasting foods than usual and masticated them better.
When the maximum day’s work did not consume all his surplus
energy—which was seldom—he would make up the deficiency
with exercises. He avoided strains, kept fully rested and
recuperated (except at the few periods of overwork), and always
stopped work at the onset of the first prodromata of fatigue, went
to bed and was generally asleep soon after sundown and was up at
work at sunrise. Always as soon as he had taken up a new kind of
work, he sought to establish periodicity of habit by doing it at the
same time each day; and in order to follow the ontogenetic periods
of development as closely as possible, he would, if practicable,
take up those studies and work for which his mind at that time had
the greatest interest and predilection. He took exercises for the
development of a normal anatomy, especially an erect spine (he
frequently curled up like an interrogation point), and for full lung
capacity and breathing. He succeeded in acquiring that degree of
periodic habit of quiescence which enabled him to inaugurate the
new methods and technique of introspection; and he opened up
several new lines of psychologic research. He discovered other
psychological illusions than sensory, and a method of training to
get rid of them. He discovered a training to prevent, quite largely,
the misleading influences of suggestion. Out of these results,
combined in various ways and orders of succession, he formulated
the incipient Mind Art, constituting the first stage in its discovery
and development.
He did not then know about the work of Wilhelm Wundt and
his followers in psychology. This work would have been of great
interest but might, he later considered, have diverted his mind from
its own lines of originality. In re-traveling the paths of others there
is not so much likelihood of discovering as when the mind strikes
out in entirely new directions.

Gates had before him at that time the definite and inexorable
purpose to evolve out of the results of modern science, and his
more special researches, a scientific art of mind-using.
Encouraged by his decisive steps, he resolved still more fully to
[page 158]
apply his new methods: to attain the conditions of efficient mental
action, to collect a larger amount of reliable data, and to practice
periodically the psychotaxic enregistration, re-functioning,
dirigation, and introspection of the mental activities, during
physiologic rest and psychologic quiescence, by which the mind
makes discoveries and inventions, does creative work, and learns.
These results caused him to rewrite his whole record of
experimental researches. He reclassified cognitive psychologic
phenomena into six great classes growing out of the three factors
that may be experimentally varied: environment, body, and mental
activities. There were no other factors then known to him. These
six classes were three sciences of Biologic-Psychology, in which
the environmental and bodily factors are varied to find the effect
upon the mental factor: Comparative, Subjective, and Social; and
three sciences of Psycho-Biology, in which the mental factor is
varied to find the effect upon environment and body; Comparative,
Subjective (varying the introspectively known mental activities),
and Social (varying the group mentation of social aggregates).
This classification, which was retained for many years,
emphasized his new distinction that mind-activity creates organic
structure and that body and environment causatively affect the
mind; it clearly drew the lines between comparative, subjective,
and sociologic psychology, and made a more systematic and
comprehensive experimental method possible. The classification
led to a more definite experimental sociology, varying the social
anatomy of groups of creatures (like taking away the workers in an
ant colony or supplying them with slaves). He studied the effect of
environment, mentation, introspection, and social phenomena upon
each other.
The mentative art was applied to itself with results as
described. One result was the useful classification into two great
branches: the art of embodying more mind and the art of most
efficiently using the mind. Mind-embodiment consisted in brain-
building, education in special knowledges, and moral training.
Mind-using, by which the individual conserves organic energy
[page 159]
and correctly functionates each of his mental capacities for the
discovery of truth, consisted in conscious originative mentation,
subconscious mentation, cooperative mentation, and research.

Under this classificatory insight Gates perfected brain-building

as a general process for embodying a comprehensive and
harmoniously developed mind, as distinguished from that special
technical training for some vocation. He developed more fully the
methods of emotional and moral training, and arrived at successful
and specific methods for curing immoralities and criminal
tendencies. He clearly learned the different technique for
subconscious as compared to conscious mentation. He saw that
cooperative mentation was different from research that consists in
a number of persons working together on a problem: that a number
of minds could be organically and psychologically interactive and
new ideative results of any one could be constantly unified by the
mentative data process to be immediately available to others. He
also obtained his first insight into a true psychologic language,
each etymon or vocable of which represented a distinct
psychologic element in the taxonomic scheme of mentative data,
and in which each etymon is carried orthographically throughout
all integrations of that element.
He applied the Mind Art to invention in many industrial and
esthetic lines, with results of great interest to psychology and the
Mind Art. Invention was always a recreation and somewhat of a
passion. He enjoyed making mechanical contrivances in inventive
problems in much the same way as many enjoy athletic or other
sports. But primarily, invention was an inductive and concrete
illustration of the Mind Art. It was easy to determine the state of
the art in any limited industrial domain, and having become
familiar with its technical knowledge, to determine when progress
had been made by any invention. By keeping an hourly record of
every step and datum of the inventive process he could show what
kind of data was most useful and what use to make of the different
kinds and so on. He considered it far more important “to discover
how to train 100 successful inventors than to make 100 or 1000
inventions.”
[page 160]
He applied the Mind Art to the sciences with results of value to
them; but vastly more important, he was thus taught the art of
using the mind.
He realized that one phase of work naturally arising out of the
art of discovery was the establishment of an institution devoted
solely to original research for the avowed purpose of discovering
truth for its own sake and of disseminating and teaching it. Such
an institution would require a body of mentators trained in the
Mind Art, and another department to test practically and apply
inventively the discoveries to practical life. “This institutional
work in connection with the sciences will represent the concrete

result of my studies”—so he said then, and he never gave up this

goal.
From its first inception his insight led him to collect all the
facts bearing on the Mind Art. However, he always thought of it
as a comparative mind-art: that there was an art adaptable to each
species of living thing. This insight kept him from many a wrong
conception, he was sure.
Early in life he saw that new methods of psychologic research
were needed. The study of the phenomena of mind had not
reached the stage of either successful generalization or synthesis.
Psychology was still busy accumulating facts and deducing laws
between the relations usually called physiological and mental.
Every additional discovery seemed to add to the almost
inextricable complexity of the structure and function of the central
nervous system.
Some of his most important new methods of psychologic
research he summarized as follows:
1. The general method by which he studied introspective
psychology, or experimental introspection; the study of the action
of mind upon mind. Experimental scientific method had not been
applied to introspection. Two special methods were involved:
The first method was the experimental study of the action of
any part or function of the mind upon any other part, and the
noting introspectively of the mutual conscious modifications of
[page 161]
one conscious state upon another simultaneous, preceding, or
succeeding state. This method, which he called Auturgic
Psychology, is an experimental study of mind upon itself; it was
most fruitful, leading to the mentative art.
The second method was the study of the total knowledge-
content of the mind by recording all the experiences—intellective,
emotive, volitional—that an individual can remember, and to make
a classified record of all memory-acquisitions as fast as attained.
This chronological record of growth of that person’s experience
will give the relation between knowledge-content and bodily and
environmental conditions and social connections, and study its
fluctuations under different dietetic, emotional, environmental,
seasonal, diurnal, and introspective conditions. A comparative
study of different individuals is needed in this important realm. A
mind consists in its memories; to study part is like studying one
limb of a tree or one leg of an animal. To study detached
fragments of the mind, as hitherto, is much like studying fragments
of some extinct animal: they may be reconstructed into a
semblance of the living creature, but the paleontologist is
successful solely because he has previously studied animals as

wholes. This method for the first time takes the total content of the
mind as the whole that is to be studied; it makes a synoptic record
of all memories a person has acquired and compares it with
subsequent records made under different conditions; and that
person introspectively notices the changes either in his total
content or in his knowledge-content of any taxonomic group under
different conditions.
2. The general method by which he studied the action of the
mind on body and environment, which consisted in artificially or
voluntarily varying the mind-activities of an organism or group to
determine the physical changes resulting from each kind of mental
activity. It consisted in the three special methods of Psychological
Biology:
His psycho-bionomical method (of organism and brain-
building) determined the effects of mental action on the physical
organism; for example, in training a definite mental process in
[page 162]
one animal and not in another in order to discover whether this
difference in mental activity produced a corresponding structural
difference.
His psycho-physiconomical method studied the action of the
mind on the environment; for instance, of heat waves, electric
waves, and chemical emanations given off by the body during
mentative effort; the structural changes effected by organisms on
their environment; and the action of the mind on other minds.
His psycho-socionomical method varied the mental activities
(by training) of social groups of creatures to see how it affected
their social structures. In addition, there was the dirigational
method, which limited the attention to the conscious states that
might arise from the objective and subjective stimuli that
originated in any selected bodily part, and held the attention to the
feelings in that part until the part was functionally augmented.
Also, the quiescence method inhibited spontaneities until reposeful
rest occurred and vasomotor equilibrium was established.
3. The general method by which he studied the action of
environment and body on mind, which consisted in artificially
varying one condition at a time (animate and inanimate) to
determine modifications of mental activity arising. Its three
special methods of Biologic Psychology were:
His bio-psychonomical method varied the organic structures to
determine the relation between each kind and the mental activity;
for instance, by means of selective propagation he rapidly evolved
or retrogressed lower organisms and noted what mental activities
appeared or disappeared with changes in structures.

His physico-psychonomical method altered the environmental

conditions one at a time to determine the effect upon each mental
function as measured by its products or as known introspectively.
This method assumed great importance, because every
environmental condition modified every mental process.
His socio-psychonomical method varied the anatomy of a
social group to determine the concomitant changes in mentative or
social activities.
[page 163]
In addition, he studied the effects of bodily postures and
gestures upon mentation.
4. The Mind Art method by which he studied the different
conditions—introspective, body, and environment—under which
the art produced the best results. By this method was studied the
mind-process in relation to its utilitarian value as modified by all
conditions that might affect it. Many special methods were used,
such as researches into the best method, technique, and condition
for applying the art of mentation to mind-embodiment and general
education, into discovery and invention, into the diagnosis and
cure of disease, into social affairs, into cooperative mentation.
These lines of research revealed the true nature of mind from the
practical standpoint: the investigator got acquainted with his own
mind.
5. The general method by which he studied the sciences and
arts as the most notable products of the mind. This method
involved mastery of a science or art by the new methods, to
examine that kind of mental content and to study that mode of
mentation, and thus to normalize the mind by giving it true
content, so as to discover the nature of valid (alethic) mental
processes.
The Mind Art itself was discovered to be a new method, and a
most important one, of psychologic research.
This Mind Art, reformulated and more fully vitalized, but still
crude as compared with later developments, was again applied to
his own mind by Elmer Gates, for the further development of
scientific method. Taking his new psychology as guide, he began
again to collect and arrange data from all available sources,
literature, the minds of thinkers, his records. He revalidated and
classified them into a psychotaxic synopsis, and applied mentative
methods to them and to himself. He attained greater mental
capacity and originality, and progressed rapidly, and as he stressed,
“never tried to do anything else.”
It was not so much what he had accomplished that gave
confidence in the mentative art as what he foresaw in future

scientific investigations in the art, especially by others. He

realized fully
[page 164]
that he had merely opened the door to a new field of investigation.
It gave him great satisfaction that he had found the method that
must eventually lead to the solution of the question “What is
truth?” provided an answer is possible; namely, that the mind must
solve it by a study of itself and the Cosmos according to the
principles of an ever-improving art of mind-using. He quoted from
his early study of Emerson: “Then in a moment and unannounced,
the truth appears.... But the oracle comes because we had
previously laid siege to the shrine.” Gates said, “To attain unto the
desired revelation, there is a shrine to which the mind must ‘lay
siege,’and that shrine is THE MIND, and within that shrine is an
ORACLE greater than the one at Delphi; namely,
CONSCIOUSNESS per se.”
These great steps placed the art of mentation, and especially its
art of discovery, on a practical basis, seemingly needing only the
further refinements inherent in their methods, which were to be
well tested by the forthcoming fourteen years of laboratory work.
But Gates felt there was still something greater to be discovered,
some deeper truth, as indicated by this diary entry of 1892:
“If the scientific problems of the times were all solved and
realized, would there not still be a great want and expectation?
Mankind expects some great and dawning revelation and
actuality—some entrance into higher possibility. I desire some
greater truth than usually revealed, with greater power to attract
and convince, and should relate more positively to the needs and
aspirations and hourly uses of mankind. If I teach the all-important
physiological laws and mental maxims and other great matters I
will have to wait for a slow and uncertain hearing and will not get
my eager audience. Now I want some great incentive beyond all
others. Is it the aerial machine? Inventions or the secret of making
them, or the practical art of originality? Shall I teach the people
and publish the results of their receptivity that stand scientific
demonstration? The commonplace is what nature is to most: it has
ceased to be wonderful and exciting. They do not know how
surpassingly great are the phenomena to
[page 165]
be seen at any time, how wonderful is the inner world at all times
accessible to them.
“O let me think the thoughts that thunder down the ages, peal
after peal, reverberating from race to race; let me do this glorious
thing, but O how much better to let me teach people how to attain

this knowledge, art, and power for themselves. This is the pay I
have sought, the joy I have most craved, the boon I have worked
and prayed for. Let me ope the portals of the tomb wherein the
human mind is buried in a deathlike sleep—let me resurrect the
crucified hopes of the world—let me see them transfigured in
embodied realities ascending to the heaven of success. O I crave a
thought, direction, suggestion to solve my riddle; let it be the
greatest truth which the world dare at this time receive. I still
await a ‘something’—I desire a knowledge which will enable me
to judge when I do get the real, THE thing, for which I have so
long studied and waited.”
[page 166: blank]

The Thirty-Three Years’ Work
[page167]
PART TWO
The Thirty-three Years’ Work
This period of his lifework completed at the Chevy Chase

laboratories, which he called the Thirty-three Years’ work,
disclosed and formulated the methods for psychotaxically
organizing operations of the intellect that comprise the sciences
and arts. The next Twelve Years’ work would formulate methods
of organizing the feelings, emotions, and subconscious processes
that comprise the esthesic arts. The next Seven Years’ work would
organize the volitions and conations that comprise the industrial
arts.
These periods rose naturally out of steps unfolding in his mind
and out of classific steps of the subject, determined by the relative
amounts of work to be done along his main lines. These periods
were not arbitrarily fixed and have no mystical meaning.
[page168]
I have tried to describe my ideas as I first get them, to write
them out under that mood and thereby reproduce in myself the
mood and mental attitude towards the subject and the universe so
through my description I may again get a glimpse of the reality.
Many philosophers have contemplated Truth as being “necessary
and eternal,” but who has described his real lesson derived from
that insight? If he could reproduce in his readers the emotional
state and mental attitude which he had, to cause them to get the
same insight, it would not matter whether he described it
accurately or not. My mind tells me that Eternal Truth rules and
reigns in all phenomena, but I cannot easily put my insight
perspicuously in words so others will see it as I do. But if I
indicate it so a reader may acquire the same insight, it will not
matter if my formulation is accurate or not—he will know what
each word means if he gets the insight. My interpretations may
often be wrong but my facts are right and my attitude is right. If I
can place others mentally where I stand, they will see and feel the
same truths and perhaps describe them more correctly, at least
recognizing what I have tried to define, and it will ever after
influence and console them. If with complete frankness I describe
my thought and emotional and volitional attitude towards The
Whole, I will teach more than if I try strictly to formulate and
systematize everything I say.
—ELMER GATES, diary

[page169]
CHAPTER 10
A Final Test
It seems to me all the past years have been a preparation, a

study, and now is coming the final test of fitness for work that shall
become more or less public. I feel this with great emotional
conviction. I have so far avoided business, which could have made
me a commercial success and even very wealthy, but I should have
died considering my life a failure if I had not carried out my
earlier and irrevocable aspirations.
—ELMER GATES, diary, May 8, 1892
“Why cannot I give definite shape to convictions? I am

conscious of a terrible ability to do something; long to fathom the
depth of the unknown, to wrest from nature by the key of
knowledge and invention some unknown impressive fact or
principle. Yet all is indistinct and I am certain that the mission and
message of my life has not yet been quite entered upon. Invention
shall always be my passion without reference to purpose;
discovery is an equal passion. To finish the studies and
experiments I must make will take great wealth, and I can get that.
Aerial navigation and other difficult things I can accomplish; I
want a good home. Have some ideas I want to teach. But when I
conceive it all accomplished, that is not what I am driving at. I
don’t know what it is, yet I know I am going to get it. I am
conscious of
[page170]
greater ability than required in the inventions now in the list. Does
nature hold some great law or secret I am about to discover and
utilize? Is there some greater incarnation of the beautiful than has
been realized in the fine arts, and poetry and drama? and is there
some secret to a higher happiness? Must I live in strict accord with
health and mind laws and commune with nature and keep my mind
open and look with original eyes on science and try to find out
what it is I can and want to do? Am I influenced in my conception
of nature by books or can I throw out of mind the author’s
coloring? Has not the scientist’s habit of education and the genesis
of language moulded the shape a subject takes in his mind, and has
not this influence hidden some great and obvious truth? Can’t I
throw off the veil and look at facts with the mind of one who has
never seen them before? Almost! Almost I grasp at the idea of
something. I almost perceive what this thing is I want to discover
or do and yet it eludes. Is my mind and character yet unformed

and must I wait a few years? Am I in a state to science and

invention and philosophy as Wagner was to poetry and music and
drama—seeing indistinctly a possible unity and higher beauty and
yet unable to completely grasp it? I think, I feel so.” So Elmer
Gates, at age twenty-five, wrote in July, 1884, at the start of this
important transitional period in his life.
In his account of the development of the art of mentation, as
followed in Part One, he wrote that no attempt was made to follow
the chronological order of experimental results and insights. For
years he engaged in at least eleven different lines of research, all
occasionally producing results, sometimes m physics or physiology
or introspective psychology or other science. An exact chronology
would have been equivalent to his entire diary, ranging over forty
years and encompassing five hundred to two thousand pages a
year, with all varieties of subjects on a page—and the result would
be confusion. Very often topics in a subject were discovered at
intervals over a third of a century. Often a law and its corollaries
were worked out at successive intervals long after the original
discovery. Sometimes parts of
[page171]
several discoveries made at widely separated intervals were
combined into a new step. These numerous topics, many times
condensed and reclassified and generalized, became mere data in a
newer and truer conception, and he thus considered them no longer
of interest, even from the standpoint of individual psychology.
Continuously interwoven with his diaries were his studies in
introspective guidance for his plans and purposes. It was as early
as his fifteenth year, in 1874, that he first began definitely to study
his mind and the world from the standpoint of his foremost hopes
to discover the great law of mind, to organize actual scientific
knowledge, to expound Cosmic Immanency of mind, to organize
cooperative mentation. In 1886, at age twenty-seven, he first
began the series of subconsciousness and Awareness introspections
that constituted his definite study of the immanent cosmic mind in
him. (In 1890 he began to organize his major laboratory, for which
buildings were actually started in 1896.)
What he believed the most instructive parts of this study for
individual psychology he preserved in a selection from his diaries
of about twenty-seven hundred pages covering periods from 1899
(and a few earlier ones) to 1909—his fortieth to fiftieth years. It
was originally entitled “A Chapter in Individual Psychology, Being
an Introspective Search for Guidance,” but he soon noted it should
have been called “An Experiment in Introspective Dirigation and
Awareness Functioning for Conscious Guidance.” Included was
an “Interlude and Retrospect,” started early in 1899, reviewing in

chronological order some of his earlier studies. He considered a

study of the actual motives, emotions, mental attitudes, and
processes of any individual who seriously approached a great
problem, worthy of scientific investigation and practically a new
field in psychology. The confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau
and similar literary efforts did not contain the data for psychologic
judgments; Gates was trying to give the actual steps of
psychological importance (intellectual, emotional, volitional) that
led to definite results.
The period 1886-91 (age twenty-seven to thirty-two) he
[page172]
considered a transitional one emphasizing the necessity for growth
in his moral disposition, which led in 1891 to another step higher
in moral growth and motives, purposes, and plans. “I have not
referred to ordinary laxness with reference to usual moral duties,”
he wrote; “I have, I hope, fully fulfilled them. I allude to those
higher questions of complete justice, truth, and love—of total
unselfishness in all my relations; of strength of character to act
wisely when my affections are concerned and not to be misled by
sentiment.”
To reproduce all his diaries would require many dozens of
volumes, he noted; so he selected certain days and data that
seemed to give most clearly the general trend of his introspective
search for guidance. Excerpts from this “Introspective Diary” will
help to reveal the motives, emotions, and prospections that led to
one of the outstanding practical successes of his life, the great
Chevy Chase laboratories, and to the culminating period of even
greater discoveries that followed.
“Feb. 6, 1899: In 1886 or thereabouts I began a ‘New Method
of Introspective Seeking for an Understanding of My Mind’s Own
Tendencies and judgments’ which had in view the adjustment of
my knowledge, motives, plans, and daily work to the highest ideals
and intuitions, and the elimination of the lower ideals and
tendencies. For this purpose I went much alone, practiced
quiescence as an aid to systematic introspection and began to drop
all plans not consistent with my highest purposes. This led to a
radical breaking up of many of my undertakings and it was
difficult to alter all my plans, for my ideals now required the
abandonment of all purely personal and selfish ends, which to my
surprise still lurked within my incentives. For some time my
affairs, so far as finances, moved slowly, but in general intellectual
and especially in emotional and moral growth I advanced rapidly;
my progress in the study of Awareness and elimination of wrong
or weak tendencies was great and satisfactory.

“It was at first my intention to place my previous studies in

introspective guidance in chronological order, but recently I have
[page173]
seen their bearing on the whole question of introspective
psychology apart from my own interpretations and conclusions.
There has not been made, or at least reported, psychologic studies
of the introspective life of an individual extending over a definite
series of weeks or years with direct reference to successes or
failures; neither has a study been made of introspective guidance to
seek the inward and highest promptings of the mind and adjust
motive and action thereto. Previous to 1886 my studies in this line
related wholly to the natural history of my own introspections,
including their psychophysical study, making them an inductive
basis for an introspective psychology. This introspective seeking
for guidance rapidly altered my plans, the transitional period
extending to the close of 1891, five years during which scarcely a
day passed without my devoting some time to a careful
introspective study and reorganization of my life.
“Dec. 26, 1891: I began a series of insights which carried me
another step in moral growth and motives. I had concluded that
the business venture I was in was destined to fail because of the
nature of my partners and of its entire uncongeniality to my tastes
and motives. It was my first business venture and from a
commercial standpoint, my last. There was no failure in method or
process but to continue would have required my sole time for some
years with further obligations, to the exclusion of my studies. . . .
“Today and for some time I have been unusually destitute of
ideas and all capacity for originality. It has been a period of rest
and recuperation, but inwardly I feel some kind of growth has been
taking place. There are periods in life more favorable than others;
certain years, days, hours when a thinker does his best work.
Undoubtedly there are similar periods in the Cosmos and
functional periods in the individual bearing directly on these
points. The emotional, intellectual, and conative must alternate
and perhaps it is so in nature as in the individual, and in a larger
sense in psychal periods also. Such periods as the philosophic
cycle through which India has passed was an emotional dominancy
with philosophic aspects; or England’s highly
[page174]
commercial and industrial period which was conative; or the
period of ancient Greece which was esthetic. There are
sociological indications that psychologic eras dominate races.
When there is an era of dominant feeling or emotion it has never

been characterized by efficient intellectual results and vice versa.

That is, there are data which lead me to conclude that there is
something approximating a definite quantity of mental effort
possible on earth at one time; which is corroborated by the
determination of the conservation of energy.
“Originality is obviously the most potent source of human
progress. To embody the discoveries of one creative mind
thousands must labor and learn. What produced the conditions
under which the new idea appeared? Are there moral
considerations? I am far from being ignorant of the modus
operandi of getting new ideas, but why in given instances I should
get ideas, and not associates who seemed in every way better fitted
to work them out, is being slowly answered in my mind. It was
because in reference to this particular principle I have since found
myself to be morally better fitted. And this gives me a clue to the
next step in my career.
“In all instances, thinking and research and introspectively
directing my mind to the subject preceded the new insight. As far
as I have been able to learn from biography, the advent of a great
and true idea always came only to those who intended their mind
seriously upon the subject; and the amount of reflection had some
determinable relation to the moral standards that were then active
in their lives. It seems that other requirements are necessary than
mere intellectual capacity; namely, moral fitness. Also conative
fitness; that is, skill and technical knowledge to give the reflection
conative and inductive application. So strongly do I feel this that
my life has risen to a different plane of exaltation; in addition to
the extreme intellectual and emotive efforts which I have made I
must make great moral effort, not merely in the normalization of
emotions, but in modification of plans and motives with reference
to complete justice, truthfulness,
[page175]
and particularly to needs of the human race or rather, all evolving
life. So I feel I have taken a new step.
“Jan. 16, 1892: I want to discover some truth, new idea,
solution to my enigmas relating to vocation. I do not believe it will
be found in books or conversation; I believe it relates to some
discovery or new triumph in my life. I am going to commence
thinking, introspecting, aspiring, writing, striving, and see what
comes if I devote my whole life exclusively to this ideal of getting
the greatest truth which can come through my mind, of discovering
that which will be most useful to the human race. If necessary to
success, when the discovery comes I will deliver it so no one will
know it came from me, and so it will contribute no reward. . . .

“I have many little bills to pay which are difficult and am in

much minor trouble and sorrow. Several hods of coal left; no
bread, coffee; enough oil for tonight; no butter; four pounds flour
and 3 cents. Much in debt; no prospective income and $3,000 to
raise in six weeks, a few hundred next week.
“Have much literary material of my own but as I review it I
think I will copy only experimental facts and destroy the rest.
“I foresee imminent catastrophe in social and political matters
some eight or ten years hence. Many duties and opportunities of
importance to people are being neglected.
“Our teachers like Emerson have much that people want to
know without giving the methods to accomplish the hopes they
inspire. I want not merely a more philosophical basis but a
scientific one for the evolvement of a philosophical standpoint. I
am eager to start The Work in proper form and stick to it the rest of
my life. Am I to oscillate continuously between different
discoveries, inventions, and periods of learning? . . . I feel within
ten years I shall address a large audience through literary efforts. I
want to lecture and talk but little.
“I am dissatisfied with my accomplishments so far. I have
thrown away many great opportunities to worldly consideration,
and the truth which I know is hid under a bushel. I quote many
[page176]
things which I would now be glad to omit because I have since
gotten more accurate knowledge and have slightly changed my
general opinion and moral attitude; but one of the objects of such a
record is to disclose not merely the order of the mind’s evolution
toward knowledge, but the order of its arrangement of what is
wrong and weak in my life.” So Gates noted in his comments of
the 1900 analysis.
“I want a way to get before the world as soon as possible the
truth I have to teach, then proceed introspectively and
experimentally to get more; to get people to help in organizing
cooperative research, in collecting the sum of inductive
knowledge, and in creating an institution devoted to study that
force or thing which is more important than all others; and what do
you suppose that is? With an emotion that is almost unbearable
and a foresight that I shall succeed, I reply that it is THE MIND.
“If anyone shall lose time or money through my business
venture I must completely reimburse him. I must absolutely
expunge from my mind all feelings of bitterness or resentment
toward those who have recently attempted to injure my affairs, this
being one condition prerequisite to success in my introspective
efforts.

“I think I have arrived at a true estimate of my degree in the

scale of intellectual effort in the world and my place of usefulness.
. . .My whole time has been given to the study of current scientific
matters and to seeking some higher truth the nature of which I
could not even picture, as a preparation for teaching in some way
truths I feel I will experimentally acquire. I see that if I succeed, I
shall have more apparatus and facilities than ever before, and will
discover much.
“Jan. 17, 1892: I am much interested in recording anticipations
which arise regarding future work. I have a fancy, for instance,
that I am to know the biological and psychophysical basis of
personality, and the psychological basis thereof; and to get a
deeper and truer insight into Consciousness than has ever been
expressed. If this is to be, I shall be truly grateful.
“Will the great Light shine within me? This finds momentary
[page177]
utterance as an inexpressible yearning that an illumination take
place first for my benefit so I may prepare to be of utility to others.
This feeling is so constant, so persistent, and so intense that it must
be a given datum in understanding my mind and conduct at this
time. I will ‘lay siege to the shrine.’ I will seek the logical
conception of my work. Clearly do I see amongst other things that
I must collect the inductive knowledge of the world without
theory. I see the dawn of new duties, not only in my life but in all
who shall study the science of mind that is slowly forming itself in
my mind. I would trust the fearless logic of my intellect; knowing
the premises to be true, it is the only guidance I can have.
“I am about to write something. I am under great emotional
exaltation, I look out upon the world with an optimism that must
prove victorious. I must give utterance to what the Cosmic
Being—the Universe personified—would say to the people of the
world if it were compelled to use my organism, and if its utterance
were limited to my weaknesses and capacities, to my ignorance
and knowledge. In other words, what is the best message my mind
can deliver about The ALL if I personify the Cosmos as a
speaker....
“It is impossible to express what I have felt; words but serve to
indicate to me what I failed to utter. It will require some years of
research and introspection before I can give explanation at all
adequate....As I read these pages now,” he later wrote in the
“Interlude and Retrospect” of February 1900, “I realize how totally
inadequate they are to express the almost unsupportable emotion
with which I wrote them, or to convey the enthusiasm and
exaltation; and only in the later book, ‘The Concept of Omnicosm,’

was I able to give any adequate expression to what then formed in

my mind.”
“Jan. 18, 1892: Am without sufficient to eat; coal gone; money
gone. What?
“Language does not contain names for what I would utter. . . .
If I could convey to another the introspective knowledge I have of
the immediate presence of the Immanent Awareness, of
[page178]
the direct conscious experience I have that this Awareness is not
my personality, I would compel attention and transform an
immoral life into a moral one. I would not have anyone follow me:
that would be the greatest wrong I could teach, but to follow that
which in his own mind I have found in mine; namely, the Cosmic
Awareness that reigns unsullied by all that is wrong and weak in
my life, which invades and guides every conscious process to the
extent that I permit it.
“That which is fully felt at first reading of a bold exposition of
a familiar subject must not be above the average comprehension or
involve elements beyond the reader’s experience; therefore his
experience must be pointed out to him and used as the
nomenclature by which to lead to the next higher set of
introspective experiences, and these again used as nomenclature
for the next step. This involves a new mode of teaching and
exposition for which I must prepare. Teaching adapted for one
class of minds is not adapted to a higher or lower class—but this
does not mean that the untruthful or mythical elements in any
teaching are thereby excused. In my exposition I must remember
that the mind of any person must start from the standpoint of his
own understanding, enthusiasm, likes and dislikes, and proceed to
any given goal through the necessary intermediate steps which
cannot be skipped. This can best be accomplished by personal
teaching and hence my first assistants must be trained in my
laboratory, for which I will need preparation, probably ten years.
“I cannot understand whether this is a normal impulse or not,
which leads me to continue this introspective guidance when I
have no money or food. If I were to give some attention to
business I would doubtless succeed.
“If questions could be decided by any other way than
experience man would be a god, working wonders, and would then
not need to learn. And yet, in some certain sense, why not? My
mind being part of the All Mind immanent in my consciousness,
why cannot it directly shape the course of its activities without
securing knowledge by other kinds of painful inductive
experience? And now it comes to me that my introspection is

[page179]
inductive experience, and my mind’s own nature is such
experience. That which my mind finds necessary to think and feel
must be cosmically necessary, and therefore I perceive that I have
arrived at an inductive basis for metaphysics which I shall follow
out as rapidly as possible.
“As I reread the last few weeks’ writing I find six or eight
important beginnings have been made that shall be new sciences
and arts. They would not have been made had I not followed my
impulse to carry out my introspective seeking during this very
difficult period.
“Jan. 26, 1892: To be well born is what the present generation
owes to the coming one. Its fate is so largely in our hands; its
wars, diseases, can be increased or diminished as we will by
regulating the intellectual and moral disposition of our
descendants. This is a momentous responsibility; to fulfill its duty
the individual parent must be full of vital energy, fully developed
in intellect, emotion, volition, and moral qualities. Hence one must
first adequately fulfill his duty to self. But the highest growth
cannot be obtained without helping others; only thus can the
highest ethical sympathies be developed. Hence individual
preparation is the first step for rearing children.
“Man ever seeks happiness and rest; his duty is to seek not for
its own sake but as a means to an end; not the object but the
method of life; not the terminus but the road. Whatever constitutes
a happy moment is worship in the truest sense. It is not any given
happiness one is most in need of, it is growth to attain a higher and
ever higher happiness. Pleasure, happiness, and activity is a means
to prepare for the higher evolution that accompanies higher stages
of happiness.
“I secured through drawing nearer to myself prospective
intellection, what I wanted. A converging consummation of all
moral duties, science, worship, and religion as a synthesis of these
duties and opportunities from the standpoint of inductive science
is, I intuitively believe, preparing itself in my consciousness. How
amazing that I should feel the advent of an enlightenment, and data
of specific propositions which I cannot yet cognize. For
[page180]
this I feel grateful. Some mind-using art is to be more definitely
evolved. I should make as many happy experiences as possible in
order to grow more rapidly into a strong personality.
“Jan. 26, 1892: I need to prepare for myself a classified
presentation of my conception of the Universal Being, which
would be a classification of the real knowledge the world
possesses. O what a task!

“Systematization of the whole content of my mind and its

extension to all the sciences seems to be a necessary next step; yet
I am satisfied it will take 10-20 years.
“Jan. 28, 1892: My culminating desire that abides hour by
hour, day and night, is to produce such a book or exposition that it
shall lead people to an understanding of their own mind; so this
knowledge may at once guide to a higher life morally, a more
useful life socially, and a more successful life in practical affairs.
If I can produce a book (of course I mean a series of discoveries)
so important that it will sooner or later reach a majority of people,
it may by simple advice and rules enable them to attain more easily
those things they realize of prime importance; to get them to
depend more and more on actual knowledge and less and less on
theories and beliefs.
“I feel with an irrepressible conviction and joy I cannot express
that in bringing forward the importance and paramount dominancy
of the mind element in human evolution, I shall bring about a
return to nature, and to right that shall save the next cycle from
much that has disgraced the past. This work, if I do it truthfully,
will at the propitious time attract the world’s attention; a limited
few at first will learn the practice of the Mind-art. (This is the first
time I have used this term.)
“I am studying mind; that it happens to be my own does not
alter the necessity of studying every phase of its motives. The
interest does not attach to specific propositions herein stated: they
are given as data to determine the order of mind growth. These
were critical periods in my life and led to definite results; these
pages do not state these results but sometimes indicate the steps
which led to them.
[page181]
“Does not everyone feel he could do what is really best if great
enough truth could enter his mind! I see that I am not sufficiently
equipped in many ways to undertake the next step. I need more
truth, elevation and skill. If with sufficient clearness I understand
the truth I would teach, the plan to put into practice, then I shall
have the emotional strength to carry it out, but how can I ever
become accustomed to the recognition that I am psychologically
part of The One Mind—Brother to all living things? Will my
heart-throbs bear the emotion? I will try to remain impassive
enough when danger comes and let it dawn slowly enough so as
not to deprive myself of the intellectual discrimination which I
must have at every step. And now I feel, as many times before, the
danger that is me is a zealous fanaticism, an unreasoning
enthusiasm, an impulse that would lead me, like so many unwise
reformers, to oppose existing institutions and run counter to public

prejudice. The truth which I see is such that it must be extended

step by step through experimental evidence; in each individual’s
life the over-whelming truth must be gradually disclosed or even
my best friends would not hear. . . . Unmistakable are the
evidences that the world is awaiting, needing, some synthesis of
the sciences with the finer intuitive and so-called occult
experiences that are slowly coming to the front, and some
synthesis that will make religion a science and science religious.
“I would not be too original: I would like to achieve a synthesis
of the truth as taught by Socrates, Plato, the Hindoo Seers, the
Essenes, the Christians, Antoninus, Emerson, Shakespeare,
Spencer, Darwin, the modem physicists. If what I teach does not
imply and contain the truth of the past then I would stop now. If it
will not lead to perpetually greater truth, if not perpetually a
method to more truth, if it does not lead to a higher morality, then I
will gladly stop now.
“I do not want to criticize anything. I shall not attack the
imperfections of the past or prejudices of the present. It shall be
the province of the institution which I hope to create to teach truth
only. I see now why during some ten years past, when
[page182]
provocation frequently came, my inward guidance would not
permit me to write a word of criticism of any religious system.
They are parts of the Cosmic Process; the relatively undeveloped
must ever precede the more developed. I must not deride the lower
stage because it is not as high as the next step. I will therefore
absorb the inductively verified truth in all these religions and adapt
whatever accords with scientific criterion and my own
introspective data. If the work I am doing does not, without
prejudice or favoritism, equally aid all races, peoples, and creeds,
then it shall not be my work. Fill me with an internal pressure that
compels activity. Give me the dash of sea waves, the sweep of the
storm, the elemental emphasis that shall carry conviction, that
glow out of these discoveries.
“I see that I must give up every personal plan whatever; every
ambition that has financial or social ends, so from a wholly
unselfish standpoint I may shape my work. Only when motives are
free from any desire to own the Institution can true success come.
I am glad I have resolved to build the Institution and when free
from debt and it contains facilities needed for cooperative
mentation, to bequeath it totally to such mentators.
“Jan. 29, 1892: Must get nearer to myself, my mind—the
Cosmic Process which is my mind. When I have consciousness
which my mind introspects, I find it dislikes the ugly, the
unbeautiful, painful, untrue; that it likes the beautiful, the

symmetrical, truthful, just. Only by contrast can we discern the

nature of Consciousness, of any fact. We would not know warm if
we could not know cold, or know high but for low, justice but for
injustice, truth but for untruth, good but for bad. Hence I find a
use for evil.
“I have intuitively known that invention would perpetually lead
into business troubles until I can be entirely the owner and exploit
any such inventions with my own means and handle them solely
for the benefit of scientific research. . . .There seems to be some
underhanded combination among certain people here against my
business interests. If my scientific work
[page183]
supports me it will lead to belief that I am doing it for money.
Hence I must support myself otherwise for a time at least.
“Consciousness is not a single but a dual phenomenon. That in
me which is conscious that I am conscious, of itself implies two
conscious conditions, one of which is my individual part of the
consciousness, and the other is the Awareness or Supreme
Consciousness and out of which my consciousness has
differentiated. They are both aware of each other. How clearly
can I introspectively realize this fact, that I am consciously part of
a larger Consciousness. If I could teach it I would willingly spend
a lifetime of misery.
“There must be no mystery, no sentiment of the occult about
the Institution. Nothing can be more wonderful than a solid,
simple, plain fact inductively acquired.
“I have a Hebrew friend who tells me there will soon come
upon earth a great teacher-a Messiah. Another friend, a Christian,
says a great Teacher will soon come, that it will be the second
coming of Christ in the hearts of men. I have another friend, a
Hindoo, who says an Avatar, a reincarnation of the Buddha, will
appear in India. A spiritualist friend says the Millennium will be
caused by spirits controlling mediums. I think all these people
have an intuitive seership by which they recognize the coming of
new light into the world. It is my conviction that this new light
which shall dominate the next Cycle and reorganize social and
political institutions is neither more nor less than the organic body
of modern science, which shall constitute all the learning of truth
and its use for all kinds of human guidance. It involves what no
other movement has, the total abolition of theory and hypothesis;
the stern ascertainment of facts. The mode and method of this
New Era will be largely one in which mind-using methods will
dominate.
“Jan. 30, 1892: Let me review what I am seeking. First: a
converging philosophical summation, some central new knowledge

of such practical value it will lead men to do it, and so transform

their lives. Second: many problems to solve through
[page184]
introspection and observation. Third: some higher key to the
mysteries of original thinking, the method by which new revelation
may be obtained, some new mode of contact with the All-
Consciousness. Fourth: a classification of all the data of inductive
character in my possession, and some literary form for presenting
it properly. Fifth: the practical way to start my work, to manage
my affairs. Sixth: if admissible, some inductive knowledge of the
life-beyond, of the more immanent nature of Consciousness, Free
Will, and such.
“Natural truth is more magical and wonderful than all fabled
enchantments; knowledge is more weird and transcendently
interesting than all the mysteries of occultism.
“Strange that in my serious business trouble I can truly keep
my mind focused on these things. There must be a way out, and
this introspective poise is the secret method of discovering it.
“Jan. 31, 1892: It is now the last day of January. How am I to
secure money for debts? Am I to drop my ‘siege of the shrine’ and
grovel for $? What I shall do remains to be discovered. I shall
soon know, the days slip by, the last of February will soon be
here—how wonderfully strange!
“Feb. 1, 1892. Still awaiting something, a knowledge most
valuable to the present stage of progress. What I want is the secret
of mind. I am surely narrowing my prospective anticipation to one
thing: the need for some great discovery relating to the mind.
“If the proper thing be done, exhibited or said to anyone, his
attention will be attracted, and this can lead by unbroken sequence
to increased power and higher knowledge and attention, from
growth to growth, until there is attained mental skill and more
mind. If properly pursued there need be no attempt at argument,
no attack on error, no disabuse of prejudice; only the truth will be
revealed.
“The attentive sequence is to be followed, either by the
association of ideas, the order of generalization, or effective
sequence. These latter are cyclical; that is, a new unit of
knowledge produces a new affective state that leads to action;
action
[page185]
leads to growth and new ability, and makes new knowledge
possible. This is true in the individual, nation, race, and organic
life as a whole.

“I received an offer from a Western University to organize

psychological laboratory, which I might have accepted except for
two reasons: my intuitive guidance wholly rebelled against it;
some letters written by a psychologist, who knew nothing whatever
of my work, caused the trustees to decide against me.
“Feb. 3, 1892: I have concluded that if I cannot arrange to
repay the debt or buy out the business, to close matters by note or
somehow, and go elsewhere and begin.
“Feb. 4, 1892: Moral rebirth grows out of some new
knowledge and especially a new affective state, which is generally
very strong. Will derives its strength, its strongest motives, from
the affective state which accompanies some knowledge. In most
people the strongest motive—some personal affection, passion, or
interest—rules. The time will come when knowledge will rule and
create these affections and passions; and this is one of the ends for
which my institution must be created.
“The points of view constitute centers of personality, the
dominance of which may control the individual. These personality
dominancies, at first secondary, may become primal by education.
A man feels a bitter and stirring anger against friend for some
recent occurrence; his face commences to flush, strong language
begins to form and he is about to utter some decisive word, or
strike a blow; but immediately there steps in another series of
personality tendencies which say, ‘Behave and calm yourself, this
is weak and mean; be ashamed and keep quiet.’ This secondary
personality complexity dominates; it consists of certain memories,
precepts, affections, which collective constitute a group of states of
consciousness or a point of view while the anger personality
likewise is a series of memories, emotions, comprising collectively
a point of view. The secondary may obliterate the former. These
personalities are points of view from which you introspectively
survey the domain of mind; if your point of view consist of
musical memories, motives, tendencies and
[page186]
knowledges, then you will view your mind from that dominancy.
If however, the majority of your experiences and motives are
mathematical, you will introspectively view your mind from that
point of view. That which is most augmented by experience and
influenced by affective states ultimately rules, not only your
introspective view but all your conduct. In any given person I can
by educational processes create other points of view by giving new
groups of intellections, emotions, and volitions, and to that extent
make him less one-sided. If I can induce a more powerful
affective state in any one of the weaker personalities, I will make it
stronger; and I see in personality dominancies a great practical

conception which must ultimately transform educational methods.

To write this out now would require a volume. Any number of
points of view or personality-dominancies can exist in the mind.
Even in any one science or art several groups of experiences may
be antagonistic and thus waste energy. A personality dominancy is
at first weak like a child; it must creep before it can walk.
“Consciousness must be understood, not by calling it ‘spirit,’
‘soul,’ or other name, but by explaining its activities as any other
natural phenomenon; namely, by scientific experiment collecting
fact after fact.
“There is a method and training which includes all others, the
tool of tools that is the mind; it is the power of powers. It is The
Way. The mind activity which the disciples of Tao considered an
extraneous influence is in reality The Way itself.
“Since seeking guidance in temporal affairs, I have received
first, the wisdom to await further knowledge of the Mind-art before
teaching it and the full determination to carry on several years of
experimental work before publishing. Also, letters and events
have disclosed certain not very desirable opportunities.
“Feb. 8: Like a weather-vane in the shifting wind is a mind
when it first attempts to get into the stream of highest thought.
“Feb. 12: Invented means to inoculate the soil with bacteria
found in the nodules of the roots of the common pea. Invented a
water lens.
[page187]
“Feb. 15: Devised an oil stove.
“Feb. 16: Devised several new forms of motor. Planets in
magnetic field of sun must revolve as they do.
“Feb. 24: I feel superabundantly full of life, energy, and
enthusiasm, and desire to do. Spring is almost here. Let a new
spring arise in my life. . . . Intending the mind is a true prayer
because it leads the mind—that is, the cosmic process called
mind—to take those steps leading to discovery. Every day I feel as
if in the presence of unknown means of mind-using for perfecting
our existence in many ways, but too ignorant or too unobserving to
know it. In the presence of so many wonderful forces,
opportunities so incredible, if I just knew a little more about my
mind I could discover that which would lift the race one stage
higher. And this feeling does not leave me.
“On looking over this diary I see that if I had not started to
write without knowing what, I would not now have certain new
conceptions which I feel will turn out to be true. . . . I understand
for the first time the true nature of Awareness and Consciousness,
and I have no longer any doubt as to my ability to work out in
practical shape the whole of the Mind-art.

“I have today been practicing an old amusement of mine which

I call ‘Reading the Spectral Book.’ It has very greatly amused me
at many times and sometimes instructed, and I regard it worthy of
repetition by any experimenter who can introspect. If I get
reposefully quiet until about to merge into sleepiness, and then
dirigate to the visual cortical areas and will my mind to visualize a
book, there will generally appear one in my vision. If by an effort
of will I succeed in holding the book visualized, and I then open
the book in imagination, I will see the memorial images of print. If
I insist on reading the print it will soon assume some definite
shape, and oddly disconnected words and sentences appear. To
pronounce these as they come will afford amusement to anyone
listening and to myself. If I do not allow any movement to disturb
the process, if continued for a sufficient time and number of days, I
am able to read whole sentences, paragraphs, and even whole
pages. Irrelevant
[page188]
nonsense, the jumbled words of an idiot will often fill several
paragraphs, and then a rational sentence will be formed and is apt
to contain certain suggestions which seem new, and which in a few
instances have proved to be facts and ideas capable of inductive
verification.
“One of the fundamental factors in creation of a genius is a
great emotional nature, out of which must come an overpowering
desire which masters all adverse circumstances and will accept
nothing but the results aimed at.
“March 4, 1892: One of the successful methods of coaxing
nature to originate a new idea was to commence writing, to
improvise, particularly about my weaknesses and strengths,
aspirations, plans, failures, successes, and such. A clear and
unbiased account of the good and bad, written for my inspection
only; an impartial study, not trying to smooth over the evil or
exaggerate the good. After sufficient effort I could clearly
discriminate between what I wanted now and what I believed I
ought to want, and after daily practice I soon found myself wanting
the latter. This was no mere opinion of mine. I tested it very
thoroughly amongst eleven people, and each gave up habits or a
wrong disposition. All that was required was to sufficiently
functionate the approval of what ought to be wanted now until the
opposite wants became weakened. A difference could also be
discriminated between what I felt sure I would want in the future.
By self-examination, long continued and impartially applied, I
could at last learn what was needed to satisfy my ambitions, and
discover what I needed now and proceed to get it. Hence this
writing about my hopes and fears put before me the real object of

my life, put me in harmony with myself, and thoughts which were

really sincere began to be formed. The mind is a cosmic process,
and the one evolving lifehood is attempting to express itself in me.
Elimination of wrong desires and plans removed almost the only
obstructions and attained the proper attitude to grow. A force
greater than myself seemed to be shaping my ideation. Had I not
applied this practice to others I could not have realized how
difficult it was to get anyone to do it. It must be done
[page189]
seriously and requires three or four years of daily effort before that
which ought to be desired begins really to be wanted
spontaneously.
“March 9, 1892: Now free to leave Erie; business into P—’s
hands, trusteeship of Clark. . . .
“March 12: This is the beginning of my religious conception of
my relation to the Supreme Being; namely, to the extent that I rid
myself of wrong motives, emotions, theories, and false
knowledges, to that extent will that which is natural to mind begin
to attract my attention. That which is true is the safe guidance.
“March 13: May my true hope be realized: freedom from
business embarrassments, opportunity to make my way as student
and teacher, access to world’s best thought and minds, facilities for
research and literary work; and a home in the fullest sense.
Home—how often through the long years have I longed for a home
of my own with a wife capable of raising the right kind of children,
and with several children—good, healthy, happy, bright. I know
with a sure and certain intuition that my best work will not be done
until I commence the great responsibility of parentage. I feel that I
shall sooner or later marry a wife capable of raising just such
children—no marriage can be considered a success unless the right
kind of children result, and then it cannot be a failure. I have an
irrepressible longing for parentage of the right kind. I am
intuitively and prophetically certain that my public work will be
shaped under the influence of a successful married life and
parentage . . . but how can I be wise enough to select a wife?
Some of the finest women and men I know beget sickly and
mediocre children. I must be introspectively led to my wife; I
think I could not trust love alone. I must have that kind of inward
guidance which becomes imperative and definite in its readings,
for otherwise how can I know whether the one I marry would make
a good mother. No one can be unless she is physically and morally
healthy. (Many notes occur through these diaries, that I intensely
desired a normal and complete parental life. The longing was
accompanied

[page190]
by the feeling it would soon happen; but how? That I knew not.)
“March 15 Made a number of improvements in aerial apparatus
and motors, primary battery and several other electrical matters.
“March 17: Made inventions and prospections in aerial
problem; added to wants necessary to culminate in Mind-art
Institution, in a World Work. It would be easy for a few hundred
properly trained mentators to organize the movements and
institutions which are now wasting so much time at efforts that are
but little fruitful.
“March 18: Wish to establish as quickly as possible an
institution wherein I can demonstrate the existence of the
immanency of the Cosmic Mind, the Mind-art, and thereby
promote the progress of the sciences and arts, and by proper
teaching arouse people to higher aims and morals. I need
immediate access to scientific books, want periodicals, apparatus,
museum, and means. I need to support myself by my researches
and continue to seek the greatest truths that can come through me.
“March 19: Making synopsis of my inventions electric, aerial,
motor, food, coal-oil. Simplest form of aerojet motor devised
today.
“March 27: Been devoting time to physical research in
thermodynamics and in introspection.
“April 6, 1892: Moved yesterday from the Burton Farm to
Downing’s residence in Erie. Did not go to Mr. C’s. I will be
alone and have time to study my next step.
“April 10: During the last two days have gone over all my
inventions for the most desirable. Invented the two-chambered
aerojet motor which directly converts molecular into molar motion.
I have an instinctive feeling I should not spend my time on it. [A
true one: the patent application remained in the Patent Office for
the next eight years without being granted!]
“April 14: Sold an interest in frog incubator for $100 which
will carry me through the month. Sold what I know about
incubating frog spawn for raising tadpoles for fowl food for $100.
“April 24: Though I seem to be standing still, I know
[page191]
inwardly I am rapidly growing; am preparing for something much
better than ever before; each experience which seems so wasteful
of energy is teaching me many things I will learn to value. Out of
these inner experiences will arise a moral growth and larger
conception of human life. I will better sympathize with the
struggles of people. I am nearer to human-kind and I do not regret
these last two years at all.

“May 5, 1892: Received a proposition regarding a sanitarium

which strange to say I intuitively and absolutely reject. Although it
would probably bring ample means at once, which I need, it is not
a realization of the World Work which I wish to start.
“Invented a sound stethoscope.
“Was offered a position as teacher in High School by Mayor
Clark, which I could not force myself to accept.
“May 31: Words cannot convey the feeling which I have, or the
earnestness of the prayers that involuntarily utter through my mind.
My aspiration and determination have reached an intensity that
makes inactivity almost unbearable, yet I cannot commence any
action until I have fully tested certain practical details. May I lose
no more time and make my living by my vocations study of mind
and the formation of an institution.
“June 6, 1892: I have resolved to accept nothing less than the
opportunity to at once start the real work of my life: to write out
discoveries preparatory to organizing a laboratory to continue
them.
“June 9: Impulse growing stronger to write briefly the truth
from all my writings without too much reference to system or
coherence so I may show them to others. Clearly this is what I
must do next. Clearly is the truth presented to me that the value of
all philosophical thought and scientific judgment depends on the
moral integrity of the mind elements enregistered in the brain; and
secondly upon the intellectual accuracy and extent of these
elements; and thirdly upon the functional capacity of that brain;
also upon bodily and environmental conditions, which we may
regulate but which are the final and irrevocable arbiters of our
thought. Different minds view the same phenomena and
[page192]
draw different conclusions because they are intellectually and
morally different and contain different amounts and kinds of
mental content with which to judge these same phenomena. They
can only judge alike when these minds are alike, and this can take
place only and rightly when they learn the same truths from each
of the sciences. Real advance in philosophy does not, therefore,
depend on instruction, reading, or learning experiments, but
primarily on the amount of mind and the way the individual uses it.
That is, on its content and functioning. It seems to me that the
fundamental work is to rehabilitate or rebuild the human
consciousness from sensations upward; that is, rebuild the brain
and the mind, being careful that each element, each sensation,
image, concept, emotion, be accurate, true, and taxic.

“June 10: Mr. F. offered to capitalize the motor; am sorry for

financial reasons my highest judgment will not let me accept. ...Dr.
C. proposes to build it.
“June 13: A local carriage-maker offers to build motor. I truly
regret that these offers tempt me.
“June 18: Improved my aerial propulsion invention and the
combustion chamber motor.
“June 24: Introspective experimentation. Have been more
serious and less cheerful than at any time.
“Shall I go to San Francisco at once?
“If I can only get myself screwed up to the point of courage
and strength which will not permit me to do anything I do not think
best. We are prone to distrust the mind in its logical conclusions
and our highest intuitive guidance. For instance, our logic is often
distrusted regarding the infinite divisibility of matter and the
limitlessness of space. There can be, for instance, no particle so
small but the mind at once asks us to admit that it might be one-
half smaller, and so on in infinite series to an infinitesimal. We are
prone to believe an ultimate unit so small it cannot be smaller, but
if it has size, then the mind at once compels us to think of half that
size. The infinitely divisible is infinite, without end. The same is
true for space; it is infinitely
[page193]
limitless. I think most people believe that though space is infinite,
it has an end, which is not true. If all motion takes the direction of
the least resistance and greatest traction, then there can be no free
will in the sense of spontaneity. Here the old discussion ends.
Many imagine that if the will have no efficient cause, it is not free;
but suppose it did not have a cause, then it would be capricious: it
would not follow any law and could not be utilized; it would be
chaos. If a man would do from this minute on just as well as he
knows how with reference to every event in his life for which he
has inward guidance, how great he would soon become! I wonder
if anyone has ever completely carried out in practice his highest
guidance every moment?
“July 4, 1892: Sky-rockets!
“July 5: I can see no use in remaining in Erie. I cannot force
myself to accept a position here, or continue in business. I feel that
I shall very suddenly act. Wonder what I will do?
“July 13: Drew plans of motor. Feel that something is wrong
about this motor business.
“July 16: Went to Washington to apply for patents on motor,
but felt it was a waste of time and money.

“July 24: Am back here in motor business; Clark to have half

and pay expenses. While in Washington spent time talking Mind-
art. Was offered privilege to make tests at the Smithsonian.
“July 21: Worked at the aeroplane and aeroplane projectile.
“July 28: Concluded not to read a paper before the American
Association for Experimental Science at Rochester.
“August 2, 1892: Workmen here not sufficiently skilled to
make motor.
“Aug. 3: Shall I go to Philadelphia to make motor? Have offer.
“Aug. 4: The more nearly I reach success with the motor the
more I am afraid it will succeed. This is the most original period
of my life and I should be devoting my time to my life-work.
“Aug. 5: It is drizzling and cool. I am lonely. I desire the old
companionship with men who comprehend the vaster issues of life
and philosophy, the cooperation of thinkers, the aid of the
[page194]
world’s best literature, apparatus, the aid of money, to advance
civilization. Then greater knowledge of mind. I am now 33 years
old, in fullness of my powers, ready for the completest action of
which I am capable, ready to carry on the assiduous pursuit of
knowledge for its own sake. I think I am as eager for knowledge
through discovery as ever was a religious fanatic. With me the
ascertainment of truth has become a religious motive; deeply
ingrained and high above all other motives is desire for discovering
truth about the mind. I have been praying daily, hourly, for at least
three years that the culmination of these new insights may soon be
realized, yet month by month my standpoints, my ideals, have
grown so far ahead that I can scarcely find time to enlarge my
plans fast enough, so rapidly have discoveries and new insights
dawned.
“Aug. 14: Adopted finally as principle of institution that all
existing social, religious, and other institutions should be used as
they are by getting them to cooperate with work to extent it does
not conflict with their principles.
“Aug. 16: Do it now. The Everlasting Now is all there is or
ever will be. A succession of things done now must by its potency
lead to all possible glories. The idea that becomes a deed changes
the subsequent events. The scepter of right action which leads to
all possible power is knowledge, normal emotion, skillful conation,
then the capacity to do just as well as you know how.
“Aug. 21: Invented clay furniture.
“Aug. 26: Wrote application for patent on improved boiler and
furnace.
“Aug. 28: Made a physiological study of narcotics.

“Aug. 31: Wrote on musical development of sense of hearing

as cerebral dominancy. . . . With very few exceptions my friends
here do not know about the Mind-art, think me to be a chemist and
inventor.
“Sept. 2, 1892: I shall soon enter into my world mission, but
how? I have an apprehension I shall be severely tested first. Many
times at the verge of commencing I have almost been
[page195]
induced to take up some business or social problem and have been
diverted. This time I will commence. I again find myself in a
predicament similar to the one I just got out of; namely, I have
enough money to make the motor and find it cannot be made here,
and in some other city it will cost more than has been promised,
and additional cannot be raised until a patent is obtained, at least a
year. Nothing can be an opportunity except that which leads to
immediately writing on my work as preparatory to the laboratory
organization. I think I will trust my inward leading more fully than
ever before.
“Sept. 10: Have been assisting Dr. C. in attending his patients.
“Sept. 13: Slowly passes the old year away and with the
exception of inward growth everything I touched has been a
failure. I get out of business with Mr. S. and immediately get into
another with the motor, from which I am now extricating myself.
Went into it knowing it was not wise, yet did not know what else
to do. And still more recently seriously considered the fertilizer
scheme in Florida and have even set it going. Have been promised
money to make analyses and go to Washington, but why should I
go there? Even my few friends there have moved away; and the
friends here are very nearly as poor as am.
“Invented a double-disk toy.
“Sept. 19: Mr. F. wishes me to join him in motor business
applied to automobiles and bicycles; no money in it for some
months.
“Sept 28: When I think of teaching anyone I am overwhelmed
with a sense of defeat. There is so much the average pupil must
unlearn. So much I would teach can be done only by laboratory
methods. I can talk hour after hour about the brain, the mind,
cerebral location, morality, the Immanent Presence, but such talk is
not teaching. Teaching can be accomplished only by first learning
the sciences experimentally and rising from that knowledge
through introspection to the Awareness function. I want to teach
something more than knowledge,

[page196]
that will make people do; give them more mind and skill in using
it. I want to bring them consciously into the presence of that
Immanency that reigns as the Awareness, judging justly and
truthfully every motive in their minds.
“Let the voice that is uttering in me cry out to the minds of
those who in the near future would turn progress and peace into
riot and vandalism.
“Oct. 2, 1892: The whole rising generation is being taught so
much that is almost valueless, a great deal that is positively wrong;
they are allowed to remain in ignorance of those most vital
functions of daily life.
“Oct. 8: 0 shall I soon act? I feel the incoming enthusiasm;
also of some serious struggles and trials. Could wait no longer:
borrowed $15 from Clark and $20 from C.
“Oct. 9: Left for Washington 3:25 p.m.
“Oct. 12: Have $3.50 left. Shall at once find something to do,
no matter what, so I will not be compelled to accept any deal with
inventions.
“Oct. 13: J. Elfreth Watkins, Sr. wants me to go to a Harrisburg
machine shop and make inventions relating to motors and steam
engines. It would give immediate income. Strange that for four
hours I made up my mind to accept.
“Oct. 20: Have made many attempts to get a position without
success.
“Oct. 22: Thirty cents left. Watkins has renewed his offer.
“Oct. 24 This morning finds me without a cent. Have had no
breakfast but kept writing, strange to say, about my discoveries.
Let me this day make no mistake.
“Oct. 25 (Tuesday): Was walking down Pennsylvania Avenue
wondering what to do; met a man whose appearance interested me.
Followed him, went into a room above Cornwell’s Grocery Store
and found he was presiding over a spiritualistic meeting.
Afterward I asked him for a job; by his talk I supposed him to be a
real estate man. I called on him next morning by invitation and he
said. ‘I know a man who I think would be interested in your
writing.’ He gave me a letter; I called on the
[page197]
man and he said: ‘I will pay all your expenses for a year if you will
do nothing but write what you have discovered.”’ [The first of
these two men, Captain Milan C. Edson, was destined soon to be
his father-in-law; and the other, Mr. Theodore J. Mayer, was
subsequently of much help.]
Elmer Gates continued in his 1900 “Review and Retrospect” as
follows: “I at once engaged in writing, from notes and memory, the

experimental work and ideas of my lifetime. I dictated much to the

phonograph, some to stenographers, and more directly to the typist.
Among my pupils was one, Miss Phebe L. Edson, daughter of
Captain Edson, who manifested great aptitude for certain lines of
my work, and I became at once greatly interested in her, not so
much because she had the power to assist me in my dirigative and
awareness studies of introspection, but for a deep and intuitive
feeling that our lives were to be closely allied and because of a
love which sprang up at our earliest acquaintance. I soon decided
to live in the family of Capt. Edson; and Miss Edson (who had
recently graduated from the Spencerian Business College),
attended to all business affairs connected with my writing the
phonograph transcriptions, hiring typists, stenographers, and all
outside matters, while I devoted myself to introspective studies in
the quiet and seclusion of the Edson home. I soon found I could
dictate directly and she would take it down on the typewriter (at
which she was expert; and good in orthography and grammar), and
thus save expense and get more done besides.
“I thus dictated ‘The Concept of O'—Omnicosm,” 624 pages—
to her, and the book was typewritten without errors or corrections.
As this book was an introspective improvisation, it required special
preparation on her part to be emotionally in the state to give me
proper aid and in no wise obstruct by wrong moods my very
difficult task. During this time I wrote also ‘What is Mind-art?
Part 1, Vol. I,’ 94 pages, which was completed in May 1893;
‘Evolution and Mind-Embodiment, Part 11, Vol. II,’ 567 pages
completed in January; ‘Principles of Mind-art Education, Part III,
Vol. III,’ 1020 pages. (These books of bound
[page198]
manuscript were circulated privately.) I wrote also my notes on
‘Mentypy and Menturgy,’ 70 pages; and during this time I courted
Miss Edson and we became engaged to be married.”
He noted that he must still write a plain, practical outline of the
Mind Art, reserving full demonstration for later volumes, including
a propaedeutic giving the new psychologic nomenclature; the
method and origin, with original thinking as basis and working
plan; science of mind and the art of utilizing it; and under synthesis
his concept of Omnism: that which is immanent functions as a
whole and in every mind, constituting a personality, a Oneness, an
Omnicosm. To secure facilities he must acquaint the proper
person with the nature of these discoveries and offer some of the
commercially practical results of past and future inventions as
means for reimbursement. It was not a financial scheme, he
emphasized, but a scientific, educational and philanthropic

movement: “I have a responsibility and World Work to fulfill,” he

wrote. “The lucrative opportunities are incidents to the method.”
His diary continued: “From December 1893 to June 29, 1894 I
devoted my whole time to a careful revision of my writings and to
the continual getting of new ideas. Ideation was so prolific I found
difficulty in recording my ideas fast enough. I had no facilities for
experimenting, but I made the acquaintance of many people in
Washington and elsewhere, entering the various scientific
societies, and had in view the establishment of a laboratory. At the
invitation of Prof. W. J. McGee and Major J. W. Powell and
others, I delivered my first public lecture upon my work at the U.S.
National Museum at 4:20 P.M., April 28, Saturday, 1894, under
the auspices of the Anthropological and Geological Societies of
Washington. It was one of a course of lectures called ‘The
Saturday Public Course.’ The first series was on anthropology, by
Gen. Geo. M. Sternberg, Dr. Frank Baker, Prof. F. A. Lucas, Prof.
W. W. Rockhill, and Dr. D. G. Brinton. The second course was on
Geology, by Dr. Geo. H. Williams, Dr. Geo. F. Becker, Prof.
Bailey Willis, Prof. Marius R. Campbell; the third course on
anthropology, by Dr. Wm. A. Hammond,
[page199]
Mr. Frank Hamilton Cushing, Dr. Cyrus Adler, the Hon. John Hoyt
and myself. The lecture was well attended and enthusiastically
received and was reported by several journalists, notably by Rene
Bache. “A few days later I delivered at the Philosophical Society
of Washington a lecture on ‘The Artificial Evolutionary
Transformation of Lower Organisms,’ and this, together with
several other lectures’ was widely reported. Without having
intended it, the character and importance of my work was widely
discussed, and it led in a short time to the beginning of my
Germantown laboratory.
“During this period I received encouragement and aid in every
way from the Hon. W. T. Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education,
who placed at my disposal the facilities of that Bureau and
introduced me to many people of distinction. Major J. W. Powell,
Director of the U.S. Geological Survey and of the American
Bureau of Ethnology, gave me the full facilities of these Bureaus
and he, in connection with Prof. W. J. McGee and Frank Hamilton
Cushing, gave me every possible encouragement, help, and moral
support. These friends remained warm supporters of my work and
were the means of my entering various societies. Furthermore they
gave me the privilege to order books I wished in the line of
psychological investigation, purchasing them for the Bureau with
funds appropriated for the purpose; books which the Bureau would
be likely to need, and which they permitted me to use first. During

this time I met Thomas H. Hovenden and others who played a

significant part in the important events of my life during that
period. Hovenden painted a portrait of me in oils and presented it
to my fiancee.”
Gates considered Professor McGee the ablest intellect in
Washington. The “fabulous McGee” as he was often called, was
ethnologist in charge of the Bureau of Ethnology and held other
important posts. He was called by Pinchot the scientific brains of
the conservation movement. An outspoken admirer of Gates,
McGee wrote to him: “It is a satisfaction to learn that the upward
curve of your career continues and to learn of the
[page200]
continued success of the Mentative Art. . . . It seems to me that this
subject is the most important among the many which have engaged
attention during recent decades, if not during the entire history of
civilization. I think the line of work in which you are engaged will
revolutionize education and lead to further intellectual progress in
the next quarter century than in A centuries before.
“You are yourself the best example of the practical value of
your mentative art.”
Frank Hamilton Cushing, of the Bureau of Ethnology, lived
with the Zuni Indians for five years, studied their customs and
learned to make some of their artifacts. His poetic nature
appreciated the intense zeal behind the efforts of Gates, while his
scientific training valued the accomplishments. His letters, always
signed with the three full names in old-fashioned John Hancock
flourish, were full of affectionate regard. He wrote to Gates:
“Believe me when I say that my concern for your welfare and
success is not from the selfish wish to have Prof. McGee’s and my
predictions concerning you to come true, but it is to have the world
benefited by what we know as well as you know, the supreme
good that lies in your proposed mode of education, if illumined
without too much delay by your equally supreme and in some
ways unconscious genius.”
Gates’ first lecture, on “Psychology as Science and Art,”
aroused the great popular interest in self-improvement and
individual psychology that is still prevalent today, and overnight
made him a public figure. Rene Bache’s special correspondence to
the Boston Transcript, for example, headlined the lecture this way:
NEWEST OF THE SCIENCES

UNCLE SAM ABOUT TO START A PSYCHO-PHYSICAL
LABORATORY
POISONS PRODUCED BY EMOTIONS

EMOTIONS DIAGNOSED BY PERSPIRATION

BUILDING THE BRAIN BY SYSTEM
MORAL KINDERGARTENS FOR BAD CHILDREN
PUPPIES EDUCATED TO MATCH SHADES
MAKING A GENIUS TO ORDER
[page201]
The Transcript is said to have reprinted the identical text one
month later, then published it in pamphlet form that sold thousands
of copies.
The distinguished and popular journalist, Kate Field, in her
weekly published simultaneously in Chicago and Washington
wrote: “Notices of these lectures appeared in nearly all the papers
in the U.S. and in many foreign countries. He has received a vast
number of letters from all parts of the world requesting full
information regarding his re-searches.” In an interview on the
Mind Art published in 1895 she declared, “This is almost
incredible, almost too good to be true,” and closed with this
challenge that was also a fervent hope:
“Prove your faith by your work, Elmer Gates, and you will be
the greatest benefactor of the age.”
[page202: blank]

[page 203]
CHAPTER 11
In Honor of an Important Event
Only by living in harmony with its nature can we win that

larger and more complete love of which the “falling in love” is but
a prophecy.
— ELMER GATES, “The Technique of Poetry”
On June 30, 1894, Elmer Gates and Phebe, daughter of Captain

Milan C. and Mary Lodema (Higbee) Edson, were married by the
Reverend Alexander Kent in the home of the bride’s parents in
Washington, D.C., and they left in the company of Mr. and Mrs.
Herbert S. Owen to spend the summer by the sea in Cottage City,
Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. As reported in a letter from the
bride’s mother everything for the quiet wedding went smoothly,
and everyone was pleased, even the neighbors who were not
invited but who agreed that the bride and groom (“seen through the
half-parted curtains”) made a handsome couple. “I was very much
pleased with Dr. Kent’s ceremony,” the letter continued; “it was
simple and impressive, and as you made the responses, both
looking so handsome and happy with the light of love and
confidence shining from your eyes, I could not feel other than glad
and happy myself, and when Prof. McGee congratulated me on my
new son saying he considered him the ablest man living, I felt a big
wave of pride rolling over me.”
[page 204]
Gates was fortunate in his in-laws; both were among his closest
friends and appreciated his work and aims. This happy period was
a great step in his quest for the normal in life and individual
development on the basic naturalistic plane. In his letter to his new
parents the following October: “I think I shall have to pay Dr. Kent
another twenty dollars because Phebe is so much better and dearer
than I expected. I owe a larger debt to the good folks that brought
her into the world for she is a most precious and beloved wife and
companion and helper. She is getting more beautiful every month,
not because I am becoming more infatuated, for when Mr.
Hovenden was here he saw her at her best—bright eyes, rosy
checks, ruby lips and her somewhat imposing dress in red trimmed
in white lace—and said to me afterwards: ‘What a superb and
charming woman your wife is getting to be.’
“I am on the fair road to several kinds of success, including the
financial. I shall be glad when I can repay in money those who
have paid me money—friendship and kindness cannot be repaid.

They left Cottage City September 9, after enjoying the summer

in “the cool and quiet of the lovely old place where they were so
happy and did such good work.” They went across the bay to New
Bedford-with an exciting but not serious collision in the fog-by rail
to Fall River, and then took the steamer, Puritan on a lovely
moonlit night to New York City. They had breakfast there, at
Delmonico’s of course, followed by a carriage ride through Central
Park and along Riverside Drive. “What a wonderful city and what
a narrow way is Broadway,” wrote the bride. Then they went to
Philadelphia, where they were met by Mr. and Mrs. Owen, who
had found for them a large furnished house on Locust Avenue in
residential Germantown. The outbuildings on the ample grounds
were to be remodeled into temporary laboratories, to make the
apparatus and instruments for the Mind Art Institute, until a
permanent site was selected. The Owens stayed with the new
couple a few weeks and started them off in housekeeping. “They
are the kindest and best of
[page 205]
people,” wrote Phebe; and Gates agreed, writing that Mr. Owen
was one “of the best men I have known; I do not allude to his
kindness to me, but to his qualities morally.” But the Owens were
soon sent away for fear they would disturb Gates’ mentation, and
so he could continue his work free of all interruptions. Even his
address was secret, his mail being sent in care of Owen for
forwarding. Hovenden, who called once, agreed not to come
again, as he understood the necessity for seclusion. He did,
however, introduce the couple to many of the leading people of
Philadelphia.
In a letter to her mother, Phebe wrote from her new home what
every bride dreams: “My Elmer is so good to me and so loving and
thoughtful. He is just the dearest boy that ever lived and I love
him more and more every day. I am so happy and well, and the
world looks very beautiful to me now. I am very contented and
indeed have much to make me so. I am fortunate to have such a
devoted husband.”
Gates described his laboratory and equipment in a letter in
October to his “parents Milan and Dema,” and went on to say that
able men attended to his purchases, especially instruments; that
two machinists, a carpenter and a workman, “will be dismissed in a
few days, so I will have my little laboratories to myself. . . . Phebe
can operate my chemical balance and weigh to the tenth of a
milligram, and is very careful and accurate. I intend to teach her
photography, have purchased a very fine camera and outfit.
“The running expenses for the laboratory are about $250 per
month and up, not including labor and purchases. Owen has made

all this possible; has given his whole time and attention to my
affairs since I married, and Mrs. Owen has done everything in her
power. They spent much time and money hunting us a place here,
visiting every locality in the City for a radius of 15 miles.
“The discoveries at Cottage City have given me a broader and
still more practical view of the Mind-art and recent ones have put
the finishing touches on it.
[page 206]
“I gained 15 pounds at Cottage City, weighed just 200 before
leaving; Phebe gained about the same. You should have seen her
wading in the surf hunting seaweed; it made her completely well. I
shall devote my whole time and thought to my work this winter. I
have splendid opportunities. Phebe runs the house, you would be
surprised to know how well!”
In an interesting letter from Phebe to her parents in February
1895, there are fifty pages of photographs that she and her husband
took of their home, laboratory, equipment, and each other. Some
of these show the charming old house and grounds with the long
grape arbor leading from the house back to the laboratory, the
queer and fancy furniture of that period, and the even quainter
clothes with which women were burdened if not decorated.
“March 28, 1895, 10:12 A.M.: Little Elmer, Jr.! What more
need I say.” So the firstborn was noted in Gates’ diary, named
Elmer Hovenden after his great friend the artist. Not in the sterile
seclusion of the modern hospital was the baby delivered, but at
home, with the happy mother holding her husband’s hand. And
the proud father did need to say more: in his diary is a poem on
“Our Baby” that portrays the normal enthusiasm of a new parent.
Three more children were born Phebe, Donald, and Roger.
The father wrote: “If children are a test of the wisdom of marriage,
then ours are proof, because I could not desire better ones.” He
loved and enjoyed his family life to the fullest. “I do not think I
could preserve my health and anabolism without the influence of
those I love. It is a rest and close communion with the natural life
underlying biologic phenomena to love and be loved.”
A kind and indulgent father securing strict obedience by
considerate and well-ordered discipline, he was the beloved and
respected head of the family; and to the delight of the children, was
a walking encyclopedia and dictionary. The children received
some special psychologic training in their early years, especially
the firstborn, and were occasionally used as test subjects. They did
not receive instruction in the Mind Art “not for my children

[page 207]
alone until the art is perfected and available to all children,” Gates
said in his diary. Healthy, active, happy children, they had
received their parent’s greatest blessing “to be well born is what
the present generation owes to the coming one.”
Many illustrated articles appeared in the press describing some
aspects of the training given the children. “How a Psychologist
Trains His Babies by Scientific Rules” ran one headline, while a
syndicated article featured the following sub-headings: “Queerest
Baby Training Ever, Queer Games Played with Scientific Toys,
Calisthenics of the Senses, Mind and Body Perfection by
Machinery.” More amusing than accurate, no doubt. One part of
the infantile curriculum was a special training of the senses by
discriminating differences in stimuli and making some action or
conation to indicate it. Replying in 1897 to his friend Dr. Harris,
U.S. Commissioner of Education, who from reading a short article
or interview objected to what he feared was “overcultivation” of
the senses, Gates pointed out that to get correct images of objects it
was necessary to get correct sensations from them, and that all the
different kinds of typical sensations should be obtained that each
class of objects can give.
A period of 5 minutes per week during the first year (after age
5 months), 3 minutes per week the second year, and 10 minutes per
week the third year is sufficient to give a child all the sensation-
memories; and it will be play for which the child hungers and has
ontogenetic fitness. He never examined a child of 5 years who
could not distinguish at least 20,000 color differences, Gates
continued. The color differences could be learned with far less
effort and time if properly taught, and more easily remembered
because of taxonomic unity. To teach them in irregular order,
ataxic jumbles, would be wrong; to keep on teaching after they
were learned, or too late in the child’s life, or spend more time than
necessary would be wrong.
The temperature-senses of heat and cold can be given in five 4-
minute lessons; the touches in ten 6-minute lessons; the muscular-
motion memories in 3-minute lemons daily for three months; taste-
memories in twenty 5-minute lessons; smell of typical
[page 208]
classes of objects in thirty 5-minute lessons. Sounds require nearly
as much time as colors. That is, 20 hours for colors, 18 for sounds,
3 for smells, 2 for tastes, 8 for muscle-memories, 1 for touches,
and 30 minutes for temperature, would be minimal for a pupil of
average capacity—about 52 hours the first three years—but it
requires special apparatus and skilled teachers. Instead of allowing
the child to have a few dozen of the same type of sensations a

thousand times and over, this method shows all sensations in

connected natural groups. Gates records that he examined
textbooks, kindergarten methods, and children’s minds with very
great care and found that not more than 15 percent of the
fundamental sensations and images of a concept had been
enregistered.
According to a note on the back of a photograph, Elmer, Jr.,
when 1 year old could discriminate 68 shapes; at 16 months he
used correctly 368 words.
One of the series of toys and educational devices for the
infantile mind embodying the principles evolved by his researches
and tested with his children was the “Geometric Image-Training
Box & Blocks” (U.S. Patent 741,903; 1903). This toy calls into
activity the play instinct and directs its imaging, conceptuating,
and ideating functions to discriminate between different images
and give evidence by a voluntary act of putting various-shaped
blocks through matching holes in the box lid. It will be recognized
as the device that has come into wide-spread use for psychologic
tests.
In January of 1895, Gates entered in his diary. “Let me once
again forget the selfish struggle for money, but struggle to make
the race better and good will come to me. Let me seek knowledge
and work for the real betterment of others and I will be provided
for. I dropped the clue last August when I took up the idea of
inventions.” During most of his life this was true, but the financial
problem was never solved, was even then pressing. Whatever
arrangement Owen had made was temporary, and his trips to New
York and Canada were not successful in raising further money. In
March he offered five hundred dollars for a
[page 209]
one-third interest in an electrical sterilized-milk process of Gates’
and thereafter his importance declined, but he remained always a
helpful friend. He was enthusiastic about possibilities of the Mind
Art ‘ and once during the summer at Martha’s Vineyard he even
joined Gates and his wife in sitting in quiescence to enable Gates
to test the different mentation resulting from the presence of
another mentator to whom he was not accustomed.
Those many friends! Always helpful in time of need, willing
to spend time and money. Many invested savings in some
invention, seldom complaining if there were no returns, aware of
the opportunity and responsibility of aiding genius. Fitting is the
expression that a man is the product of his times—too far ahead in
his work for large endowments from the great fortunes or
foundations of the day, but ever close to the small circle of
appreciative friends. In an article published in Success magazine,

May 1900, “We Can Increase Our Mental Powers,” the editor, his
friend 0. S. Marden, asked him to include the elements of his
success. Of the seven enumerated, one was: “the aid and
confidence of friends. As far as I have been able to judge, no
success involving public consideration can come except through
the intermediation of friends. At critical periods of my life, strong
and true friends always came to my assistance.”
In a letter to Clifford Howard, Gates wrote: “To get in
sympathetic touch with the mind of one, reveals more clearly to me
my own mind. It is in the mind of a person, including my own
mind, that I come into contact with the greatest wonder and
mystery, Consciousness. To get better acquainted with it is a goal
that transcends all other achievements. . . . Only when some one
lets his mind blend in sympathetic imitation of my own ideas and
ideals do I feel properly understood. It is not necessary that we
believe the same things or have the same kind and degree of
scientific knowledge, but be on terms of intimate and friendly
sympathy and still more needful we feel for each other the warmth
of personal affection. Then it is that I am really living my rightful
life. The love of a friend is in itself a transcendent satisfaction; we
are not even satisfied with the
[page 210]
love of the opposite sex unless it contain this comradeship-love,
this high feeling of friendship.”
One enterprise that seemed to have all the elements of
commercial success was his electric loom and weaving inventions
developed and tested at his Germantown laboratories, but they
were interesting to him only as a test of the Mind Art. Once during
a lecture Gates was told that if he were to apply his art to a subject
with which he had had no previous acquaintance, it would
probably not be successful. He selected weaving as such a subject.
“Now the first step in the art of mentation requires the careful
learning of all scientific and practical details,” he wrote;
“consequently my interrogator had his objection answered in the
nature of the method. I secured letters of introduction to practical
weavers and loom makers, and with the aid of several assistants
made a systematic search of the technical literature. By actual
observation of looms and methods of weaving I built over my
brain with reference to that subject; acquiring all the images,
concepts, ideas, and thoughts that six weeks’ continuous effort
made possible. This systematic method put into my mind a greater
number of actual data than possessed by those who had devoted
their lives to the subject, because practical men are specialists. A
man is a silk weaver, or designer, or attends a certain class of work
in loom building, or preparing cloth, or to spinning or carding, and

thus is not a master of the whole subject and cannot do generalized

thinking.
“An important point in the art of mentation is that the speed of
the intellective functions can be increased at least ten times.
Another is that the process of acquisition eliminates false data; a
single false hypothesis or theory will mislead and vitiate all mental
processes.” Having applied to these data the principles of the
Mind Art, within three weeks Gates had made twenty-two
inventions (later increased to forty-two) of an electrical method of
weaving and manufacturing textiles. The four fundamental
methods, patented in the chief weaving countries, were on
electrically-operated shedding-mechanisms, jacquard-mechanisms,
reeds, and shuttle-motions (U.S. Patents 565,446-49, inclusive).
[page 211]
These methods permitted the transformation of the old, slow,
cumbersome and noisy loom into the modern high-speed machine,
introducing the flexibility of electrical control. Although their
newness was met by an early objection that the “operators would
not be intelligent enough to manage it,” these inventions were well
appreciated and seemed ripe for commercial success.
“I am very sanguine about your loom and feel that it will work
wonders,” wrote Professor Miller, principal of the School of
Industrial Art in Philadelphia. Professor Dolbear wrote: “I
anticipate for your loom-well, I don’t dare say how much. . . . It
will yield great results. I have been mulling on this problem for
some years but have made nothing.”
But the inventor as usual did not want to be tied up in
development and business. In April he agreed to assign a two-
thirds interest in the loom for money for models to try out the
inventions, with an option to buy it back in August. On August 27
his diary recorded that he received twenty-five hundred dollars
from T. C. Search to repay this advance; and with great relief he
could then drop the loom.
The year at Germantown was a busy one in many ways. Gates’
most successful lecture before his largest audience on “Psychology
and the Mind Art” was considered outstanding by the local press.
The press reported the largest of any of the Educational Club’s
audiences and stated that it included some of the best-known
educators in or near the city. “Among the most interesting of the
scientific men of Philadelphia is Elmer Gates,” the report
continued. “His researches have been so novel and their results so
startling that in a few years he has sprung to the front of original
investigators, being ranked by some of the officials of the
Smithsonian as among the greatest scientists of the age. He is an

impressive, robust man under forty, and an interesting and

attractive speaker.”
Gates also delivered a lecture on Mentation at the Philadelphia
Normal School and six lectures to kindergarten teachers at the
School of Industrial Art. There were several magazine articles,
including “The Science and Art of Mentation and New
[page 212]
Methods of Psychologic Research” in the Monist, and Kate Field’s
interview. One trainer of kindergarten teachers, Mrs. L. P. Bush of
Seattle, wrote: “Thanks for your instruction. It has been the
rainbow of promise arching over my life and thought ever since.
As I study the notes taken of your lectures, again and again I find
the ideas becoming clearer and truer and richer, yet making me
long for a deeper insight. We are organizing a Kindergarten Club
with the special purpose of becoming acquainted with your thought
and methods.”
In the laboratory Gates continued inventive work on the motor,
volaris (airplane), and such subjects as electricity from coal or gas,
crystallization, magnetic transparencies, aseptic (peroxide) soap,
liquid clock, disk piano, clay furniture, ether viscosity, chemical
vacuum, oxygen manufacture, oxide fusion (aluminum oxide
gems) and diamonds, drill and welder, vibratory anesthesia,
pneumatic rain, nursery floor, spiral-flame furnace, and color
photography.
In December of that year (1894) he wrote a letter to establish
priority, to J. B. Walker, editor of the Cosmopolitan magazine
(which had offered a prize for the best essay on Gravitation),
describing his experiments indicating that gravitation may be an
ether-buoyancy phenomenon, and outlining further work if means
were available. He commented that to mention the word ether in
Philadelphia at that time was to be classed with the cranks, but his
experiments indicated new phenomena that were worthy of further
investigation. This letter, misfiled, was acknowledged and returned
July 1899.
But Gates’ main interest was in his psychologic studies and
advancement of the Mind Art. For instance, in that same month of
December he announced in a letter to Professor McGee the new
method of research discovered the previous August at Martha’s
Vineyard: “I am elated to an unsafe degree because it threatens to
drive all business topics out of mind. It is a synthesis of the art of
brain-building, auturgy, originative alethic mentation, Omnism and
some new discoveries. It will appeal to you more than any works
of mine about which you have heard.

[page 213]
Under the superb and sure guidance of this generalization I am
ready to organize scientific researches with a certainty that I will
make definite and continuous discoveries of most importance; not
merely in psychology alone but in all the sciences and arts. They
are now departments of the science and art of mentation. . . . With
a given collection of memory-structures and amount and kind of
knowledge thus organized in an individual there is a natural
mentative unfolding possible to him. For best and truest (alethic)
results he must not have some course of experiment forced on him,
nor his researches guided by any consideration outside of his own
mental growth while dealing with all kinds of knowledge
congenial to his mind. The mentator must more carefully watch
the normal integration and differentiation of his conscious states
with reference to the subject in mind and to all other subjects
which appealingly arise. He cannot force mentation to produce a
given class of ideas, but he can promote the total subconscious
functioning so new ideas will well up in consciousness upon
subjects selected by the brain itself and by the Cosmos which rules
around and in the brain.
“Let the mentation follow its own course; the mentator may not
discover a fixed objective but may discover other things of greater
importance to him at that time. He must not try to force a solution
of some knotty problem, but quietly study the problem and his own
conscious mentative functioning and follow where they lead. He
may not solve the particular problem but numerous others, and
finally a synthesis of them will lead to a comprehensive
generalization which will include the former knotty problem as a
particular case. It is more mind, not more experimenting, that is
needed. The new method (not herein described, only a superficial
aspect is given), seeks not so much to develop a given science as to
develop a given mind to its fullest possibilities. I have proof that
the disjointed and separate discoveries of a natural mentative
unfolding will all finally form part of a unified system of thought.
A brain is like a plant: if it is allowed full and natural growth it will
bear its largest normal fruitage; but if either mind or plant is forced
into unnatural channels,
[page 214]
or forced to function in a given way at unnatural periodicities of its
life for that kind of functioning, the normal unfolding will be
obstructed. . . .
“For the pupil the one greatest question is, not what discoveries
or money can I make out of a science, but how can I achieve the
greatest results by my mentation. Not the science but the mind is

the stand-point. The pupil is led to make those very experiments

which his normally developed mentation needs.”
An event of introspective importance was recorded in his diary
on November 30: “About half an hour ago while in bed and just
waking I suddenly remembered that it was by a peculiar kind of
dirigative cerebral auturgy that the greatest and best mentation of
my life was inaugurated while in Erie. I dirigated the coenesthesis
into activity in each area of the cortex one whole day, passing from
one area to another for a long while, and then dirigated the whole
brain at once, especially the frontal and upper portions. I
continued until my brain got so sore I had to quit all thought,
reading, even conversation. I could hardly walk, the jar hurting my
head. I had carried it too far (perhaps). It was my first severe trial.
It was perhaps the first time any human on earth had tried it. I
think it is the beginning of a new dispensation of mentation. The
conditions for the greatest mentation (by which I got the
beginnings of Omnism and most that is best in the Mind-art) were
so complex—so many data and influences -that I have been unable
hitherto to analyze them, though I have tried and tried. I am
exultant that I have succeeded after for so long having lost the
clue.”
About a week earlier, only six weeks after coming to
Germantown, he had taken another step in his improvisation
studies, and begun to record his moral and introspective steps in a
new diary, with large sheets, that he entitled “Memorandum of
Mentations and Random Notes during Unstable Functional
Equilibrium of Originative Mentation Commenced November 21,
1894 at 319 Locust Ave., Germantown, Pa. In honor of an
important event in our lives.”
“When the mind is in a state of functional activity but without
[page 215]
a definite plan or subject for mentation, so as to shift from topic to
topic by faintest impulse, it is in a state of unstable functional
equilibrium. This permits any part of the brain to functionate. By
writing beliefs, guesses, and opinions daily the mind will soon
settle into fixed grooves and upon subjects which please most and
from which it gets best results, which will continue until the
mentation changes.”
By February, Gates was wishing for a cessation of uncertainty
about his living expenses—whether to try to extricate himself or to
trust to Owen, who evidently was not succeeding in getting further
resources. On one of his trips to Washington, Gates met
Alexander Graham Bell, who advised him to continue with his
inventions. Occupying a neighboring cottage during the summer at
Cottage City were Mrs. Miller and her husband, Professor L. W.

Miller, principal of the School of Industrial Art of the Philadelphia

Museum. The Millers visited Gates’ Germantown home and
laboratories, and Gates inspected the school. In September, Gates
moved to Philadelphia and was appointed to the chair of
psychology at the school; but promised apparatus and experimental
facilities were not forthcoming, owing to financial disappointments
of the school.
In December, Mrs. Phebe Hearst, the great philanthropist,
telegraphed Gates to dine with her at the Stratford, where she
offered him the use of twenty-five thousand dollars if he would
move to Washing-ton. He went and waited until the following
March (1896) for the money, then built a small laboratory at Chevy
Chase, Maryland, a newly developing suburb. Mrs. Hearst’s
financial adviser, as well as her son, William Randolph, both
objected to a further endowment. The original amount offered had
been the result of a direct appeal by Kate Field in her newspaper
column.
In her editorial of March 9, 1895, in closing her account of
Elmer Gates and his work, Miss Field wrote:
“It is his purpose to organize an institution devoted to

the study of mind according to principles developed in the
Mind-art,
[page 216]
to the diffusion of knowledge about the mind, and to the
training of teachers. The place to test this new science is in
the Kindergarten and I warmly recommend its
consideration to Mrs. Hearst, who is generously sup-
porting two model kindergartens in the District of
Columbia. . . . The establishment of a department for the
cure of immoral dispositions is vastly more vital than the
acquisition of many studies now crammed into heads that
have never been taught to think and have inherited unhappy
tendencies which environments aggravate. For the faith
that is in me I have not only my conviction but the
assurance of scientists. Believing that crime is the result of
ignorance and that intelligence is its cure I appeal to one of
my own sex, a woman of broad and enlightened
sympathies, to give Elmer Gates an opportunity. Women
were first at the cross. A woman’s jewels discovered
America. Why should not a woman discover the truth of
the last revelation?”

Quite a facile pen did gentle Kate wield. Gates received his
first communication from Mrs. Hearst the same month the article
appeared.
Professor Dolbear wrote in May 1896:
“It is three months since I saw you in Washington. I am

more anxious to know how your scheme works than you
imagine. It is the only one that attacks the real problem. . .
. I want your work to go on and I presume it will. Please
say to Mrs. Hearst, if you care to, that I am thankful she is
able and willing to provide such a notable investigation,
for the world will learn greatly by it, and it may quickly
transform the business of Dr. Harris’s Department in
Washington, and kill Hegel’s philosophy quicker than a
generation of philosophers.”
The small private laboratories at Chevy Chase soon grew into

“the best-furnished series of private laboratories in this country,”
as often described, a center of world interest, a source
[page 217]
Incredible, the number of experiments Gates made in these
laboratories, as well as in the subjective laboratory of his mind!
His productive and efficient Mind Art, still further to be perfected
and extended, gave him an infallible tool new to the investigator,
so he was an exceptionally successful and fruitful one. “Far and
away the ablest, most scientific and accurate investigator of
scientific matters this planet has yet produced,” said the consulting
engineer Major C. E. Gillette, former chief, U.S. Corps of
Engineers. “His system of work is such that he practically has
physical science mentally card-indexed.”
Now at maturity, Gates was that trained specialist in
introspection of his boyhood plans, still to reach the height of his
mental powers, the culminating triumphs of discovery, and the
wonders of the new Cosmos of Consciousness.
The laboratory—always so much of his life and work, created
out of eternal struggle and loving patience! After he had given up
his great one at Chevy Chase, his fifth and last, he often in his
declining years longed for his “con amore” laboratory, free as
always to search where his mind led. It had led from that faraway
“laboratory” in the roofed-over comer of the old rail fence,
juvenile precursor to Chevy Chase, through love of truth and of his
work, to the Mind Art with its criteria of true intellections, normal
esthesias (emotions), and skillful conations. And for normalizing
the emotions he surely found no important event in life more in
harmony with love itself than marriage and its children!

In his treatise on poetry Gates wrote in 1917: “There are three

stages of love—passion or romantic, conjugal, and that higher
complex which years ago for want of a better name I called
‘cosmurgic’ to indicate its cosmical and non-individual nature.
Something vaster than personal relations, it is the new beginning of
an opportunity to enter a more beautiful state, a higher state arising
out of the non-individualistic and cosmic process. It is not
necessary to personify this process to grasp that
[page 218]
this love-process is going on of its own powers and tendencies like
the growth of a plant, and we do well when we do not obstruct it.
We do better if we cooperate. The Cosmos creatively evolved love
and gave it just such a nature as we know it to have; and in
expressing this nature in us for purposes other than our own
motives it experiences that much of the nature of The Whole. But
even this procreant urge is itself part of a wider and deeper cosmic
urge and part of a process in which individuals are mere tools or
raw materials. Such a conception of love is in the highest sense
poetical. It is a universe functioning, whose sanction we have to
win-to win love itself by living that kind of a life which will render
the conscious and subconscious activities, constituting love,
mentatively dominant and cause love to grow its own growth and
attain a more complete manifestation and expression. Only by
living in harmony with its nature can we win that larger and more
complete love of which the ‘falling in love’ is but a prophecy.
There is more in love than has ever been experienced. No one has
ever loved or been loved half enough, and a whole new continent
of joy will some day be discovered by those who follow the cosmic
beginnings of the next stage in love’s evolution.”
His wife Phebe’s help and inspiration, which greatly aided him
in advancing to a higher level in his work and moral disposition,
was gradually diminished by the growth of his work and the press
of her family. With children to be fed, she could not maintain his
unquenchable enthusiasm and optimism, to wait until the last
minute for financial crises to be solved “nearly always on time in
the course of events, never more than one or two months late.”
But who can doubt that they won more than “a prophecy of that
higher and more beautiful state approaching cosmurgic love”?

[page 219]
CHAPTER 12
The Laboratory Epic
The common objects and events which are the words of that
incomparably greatest of all epic poems—The Cosmic Process.
—ELMER GATES
Although the researches of Elmer Gates would hardly be

considered commonplace, he studied through them the most
common of objects and events—and the most wonderful to him:
conscious states and processes. Perhaps no better sample of events
could be selected than his Chevy Chase years to give an
appreciation of his dual tasks of making not only his researches but
the money for them.
Very few, he found, understood that the mind is the real
creature, and that mind would not be but for Consciousness. The
mind must be in its own nature similar to that cosmic condition out
of which it came, and cannot be in fundamental antagonism or
contradiction to it. To know Consciousness is to know directly the
most interesting, mysterious, potent, and perhaps most all-
pervading force in the universe. It is to know in one’s own
consciousness as Consciousness the power that rules life and is
Life. To the extent that Consciousness is known, so will the
universe be known ontologically.
[page 220]
To the Mind Art, science and art are mental experiences and
processes. Science is definitely ascertained and systematic
knowledge gained by exact observation and correct thinking. Art
is scientific knowledge systematically applied to some desired end,
including technical skill. Not only may there be to every science a
corresponding art, but every science contributes to a number of
different arts. Science consists in mental states and their
arrangements by mental processes according to the nature of
Consciousness and the laws of mental activity. Art is the
application of knowledge according to tested and rational rules to
the doing of anything that can be purposively done; it is always a
mental doing. Art thus has a wider meaning than usual, including
all the results of human efforts that are not science. All facts are
known only as and by conscious states, and all knowledge is
discovered and known only by mental processes. Therefore in its
broadest sense psychology is properly the science of which all
others are subdivisions. Likewise all arts are mental processes, all
technical work is done by and consists in mental activities, and all

skill is mental capacity and efficiency; therefore the art of mind-

using is the one art of which all others are subdivisions.
Just as there is an art of working with metals or metallurgy, so
there is an art of working with the mind, or psychurgy, which was
the name Elmer Gates finally adopted for the Mind Art, or
mentative art. Psychology is from the Greek psyche, “soul,” or
“mind,” and logy, meaning science; thus mind-science. Psychurgy
is from urgy, meaning working (ergon, “work,” ergo, “to do
work”); thus mind-working or mind-art. Although he used this
term for one division of an early classification of his work, and
apparently in a lecture late in 1895, Gates did not generally apply it
in his writings until after he had established in 1896 his Chevy
Chase laboratories, which soon became “The Elmer Gates
Laboratories of Psychology and Psychurgy: an Institution devoted
to the science of mind and its practical applications.” (In 1905 it
became “The Elmer Gates Laboratories: an Institution with
educational aims devoted to the study of the sciences and arts.”)
[page 221]
After having formulated the principles of psychurgy, practiced
and improved it, Gates began to organize plans and methods into a
practical system as a first step toward making it available to others.
This had been definitely begun at Germantown, where all his
discoveries and methods were synthetically and carefully
summarized, new lines of research projected, and plans laid for a
careful practical test.
The purpose of the Chevy Chase laboratories was briefly
described in his report circulated in 1899 and 1900 among those
interested: Bulletin No. 1: A Brief Synopsis of the Work, Part and
Prospective, at the Elmer Gates Laboratories.” It pointed out the
only three factors to be varied in psychologic experimentation:
environment, bodily structure, and mental activity. These led to
six branches of research (as described in Chapter 9): three
biopsychologic branches of psychology of which his general
conclusion was that every change in environment and bodily
structure produces a quantitative and qualitative modification in
each mental faculty; and three psychobiologic branches of biology,
the reverse of the preceding, in which his general conclusion was
that every change in mental activity produces a change in the
bodily structure and environment of the creature. He considered
that the scope of psychology was larger than might appear because
the study of mind must include the contents of minds and products
of mental activity; contents include every science and art, and
products include everything ever done. Sciences are best studied
as kinds of mental content and products and modes of mental
activity.

The application of such discoveries is psychurgy, the bulletin

continued. Its first step, Intellect Building, applies the art of mind-
embodiment or brain-building to the getting of more intellect. To
leave any area of the brain fallow of the structural and chemical
changes of memories from any one science is to produce a one-
sided mind. The brain will not be an anatomical whole, the
intellect will be neither a psychologic nor a biologic unit, and that
department of nature about which knowledge is lacking will not be
functionally active in that mind.
[page 222]
The second step is Emotion Building, or the embodiment of all
the normal feelings and emotions, for wrong ones will mislead the
investigator as surely as wrong intellective data. A perfect
intellectual growth is impossible without normal emotional,
affectional, and esthetical development.
The third step, Volition Building, leads to getting all the
normal capacities and functions of volition and willing, to the
voluntary dirigative control of the intellections, feelings, and
bodily functions.
Besides these three steps of mind-building, there are the three
steps relating to the art of mind-using. the fourth step, Cognitive
Mentation, is the art of using the mind creatively or originatively
for the most efficient regulation and use of the intellective
processes for discovering truth. It includes regulation of the
environmental and bodily conditions; and the art of training the
functions of sensating, imaging, conceptuating, ideating, thinking,
reasoning, and introspecting. One of its several steps gives the
pupil by new methods every sensation, image, concept, idea, and
thought that direct taxonomic study can give, omitting none. Then
the pupil learns to use each of these intellective functions
separately; that is, to image, conceptuate, ideate, or think. Next he
learns the two kinds of conceptual, ideative, and thinking
reasoning; and then the art of introspecting. From a synopsis of
the verified mentative data, or psychologic classified knowledge of
that science, under proper bodily and environmental conditions, the
pupil then applies each of these intellective functions to each
datum of that synopsis. Before a permanent record of new
concepts, ideas, or thoughts is made, they must be inductively
verified by observation and experiment. Invention and discovery
can be thus made a daily business and new ideas obtained with
systematic regularity. It necessitates the entire abandonment of
speculative hypothesis and theory.
Before pupils can be given this step, there must be finished a
work involving the enormous labor of collecting and verifying the
mentative data of some one science and getting together a

[page 223]
museum-laboratory where all the typical objects and phenomena of
that science can be shown in taxonomic order.
The fifth step is the art of Emotive Mentation. Normal
emotions are the basis of normal tastes, likes, and dislikes.
Emotion is the basis of interest and the energy of spontaneous
attention. Through metabolism it creates or destroys the energy of
mentation. Emotion is the medium for regulating the subconscious
functionings from which the conscious processes arise. The
greatest original insights and foresights of man have most largely
been achieved through the subconscious functioning; and it is
always a deduction either of individual experience or of that larger
sum of phylogenetically inherited subconscious tendencies and
capacities and ontogenetically acquired conscious and
subconscious experiences. The researches and experiments that
such a deduction suggests should be made and any inductively
discovered facts verified.
The sixth step is Conative Mentation, based on a training in the
actual doing of those things that constitute the sciences, arts,
trades, professions, and all the normal acts of life. We must first
apprehend or cognize the new idea or truth, then feel its beauty or
utility, then realize or make available for human use what we know
and feel, which requires the doing, the invention, the performance,
of something that completes the mental process. In its lower stages
this art involves training of the volition and the will, so far as they
may be induced to act by the feelings and emotions and personal
interests. In the second stage, educative auturgy, the intellective,
emotive, and volitional nature is governed by a process of correct
mind-embodiment; that is, by eliminating the wrong and
embodying the true elements of interest, so that motives may be
the out-come of correct content. The third stage, dirigative
auturgy, is a training in the power to will that which is true and just
without regard to personal ends.
These six lines of psychurgic training comprise every known
way in which the mind of man can be used in any known activity.
It is strange that throughout the course of history mind
[page 224]
has been the subject least studied. All the possibilities of the
universe are open to mind and to nothing else. Psychurgy offers
incomparable inducements to the study of the fine and industrial
arts as well as trades and professions.
The using of mind involves the whole question of life’s
conduct and includes moral and ethical training, which in turn
involves choice of and preparation for vocation and trade, and

includes individual character and personality. The art of using the

mind covers the whole scope of man’s relation to other men and
other forms of life, to the Cosmic Whole out of which man has
been differentiated. Right conduct is an adaptation of acts to ends
according to the truth of the things to which man is connected or
related. It requires correct knowledge of the things upon which he
acts, in the presence of which he acts, and of the thing (the mind)
that acts. Such a knowledge of things and their relations is
scientific knowledge, and science acquires ethical value and
religious meaning. Moral training consists in acquiring correct
intellections, emotions, and volitions. Ethical training involves the
relation of man to his fellows, and religious training includes that
modification and regulation of conduct which results from a true or
supposed knowledge of our relation to the Cosmic Whole as an
event in time and space. Moral training is as important for
scientific research as is intellectual training. Underlying a perfect
intellectual growth must ever be a true moral, ethical, and religious
foundation.
Out of these six branches of psychology and six of psychurgy
has arisen the work to study the entire range of mental phenomena
in all creatures; the collection of mentative data or the psychologic
classification of verified facts of the sciences and arts; the diffusion
of such demonstrable knowledge among all peoples without
attacking any belief or system; the training of teachers and
investigators along the new lines; the establishment of a series of
departments to present every fact and phenomenon of every
science and every method of every industrial or fine art; and the
organization of an educational department where the whole
[page 225]
subject of psychology and psychurgy can be taught by students
trained in the mentative arts.
To carry out these plans there were to be six psychologic
laboratories—one building for each of the six branches of research;
the endowment of them with sufficient means for research or to
make them self-supporting; and the organization of the six
psychurgic laboratories in which the psychologic discoveries
would first be applied. In 1899, the bulletin stated, buildings for
four of these laboratories were in existence. Laboratory No. 1,
rated one of the largest and best-equipped private laboratories in
the country, contained a well-equipped machine shop for making
scientific instruments and inventions. Laboratory No. 2 (the
“Music Hall”) had just been erected to house the department of
acoustics and music. No. 3 was partly erected, to house
temporarily the departments of chemistry and metallurgy; and No.

4, just purchased, was for the department of painting and pictorial

representation and temporarily the department of electricity.
In No. 1 were many departments that would soon need separate
buildings. The six psychurgic laboratories existed only in embryo
form as represented by the character of the work being done: they
would be used to test experimentally and apply discoveries. The
six psychologic laboratories were to be devoted to pure science,
the other six to applied science; in addition, there would be two
administration buildings, making fourteen buildings in all.
Another set of buildings would be required for educational
purposes. If this plan were carried out, there would be three
institutions: the psychologic laboratories for discoveries in
psychology and each of the other sciences; the psychurgic
laboratories for tests of best methods of applying the discoveries,
and where the art of mentation would be continuously perfected
and extended; the educational department, where the sciences and
useful and fine arts would be taught according to the discoveries
made and applied in the other institutions, and teachers trained.
Cooperative researches would be carried on by
[page 226]
investigators in different parts of the world, requiring a
correspondence department.
As soon as all these aims were sufficiently realized to admit the
placing of the departments under the supervision of competent,
trained assistants, Gates planned to devote himself to organization
of other lines of research. This movement would be guided, not by
any man or group but by the total organic body of verified and
classified scientific knowledge; and its method would be the art of
using mind. He also intended to publish some account of his work
in twelve volumes, one for each line of research.
This was the plan outlined in that Bulletin No. 1—of epic
proportions! Impossibly large? That is the way it had to be:
taxonomically complete.
Interest in Gates’ work and plan was worldwide. Many people
offered their services free to help in collecting data as soon as
facilities were available. John E. Searles, organizer of large
business enterprises, including the sugar trust, wrote: “Some one
asked me whether I thought you would succeed in the practical
application of your ideas, to which I replied that in view of what
you had already accomplished, I should be loath to place any limit
upon the possibilities of your work.”
But Gates’ art of mentation, his psychurgic methods, kept
bringing new discoveries, widening horizons. Truly was the mind
a continuous growth. His great plan for his laboratories was never
realized. Actually only one more building was added, a small

annex with a room for kindergarten instruction and a basement

containing the storage-battery plant. But he never gave up
working and planning for the institutional World Work to which
psychurgy naturally led. If he could not accomplish the task,
future students of psychurgy would.
His first lectures of 1894, that had made Gates famous, and his
course given the next year in Philadelphia, were followed by
lectures on rearing children to the National Mothers’ Congress, on
sense training for the deaf and blind to the National
[page 227]
Educational Association, and on psychurgy applied to education.
In 1897 he noted that he had attracted attention but not the
substantial success he craved and that the work needed. He felt
awake and ready for something new and revolutionary in his
researches, that seemed to offer evidence of an activity in the mind
that modified mentation to produce results that could not arise
through the senses alone.
In 1898 two articles by Gates appeared in Popular Science
News: “Acclimatization of Plants,” and “Chemical Selection in
Plants.” Interesting news reports appeared: “Dirigation,” “New
Light from Invisible Rays,” “Forecasting Disease,” “The Science
and Art of Child Rearing,” “Diagnosis by Psychophysical
Measurement.” In 1899 when he found that his work was arousing
extensive public interest—almost like a popular movement—and
before he was ready to organize and utilize that interest, he
cancelled all engagements. Alice Fitts, the able and farsighted
trainer of kindergarten teachers at Pratt Institute, who had often
visited his laboratories and become enthusiastic about his
psychologic work, had arranged for him to lecture during
December and wrote: “Do you mean that you cannot come to us
when you say you have cancelled all lecture engagements? Please
do not include us because yours is not a lecture here, it is a visit,
and if I have to come to Washington and bring you I shall do so.”
She had written before: “We have a number of lecturers, for in-
stance, Dr. Stanley Hall next Thursday. . . . I hope very much that
you will come, not only for the good of the Institute but that you
may materialize; a good many people do not think you exist, that
you are only a myth.
No myth, Gates stopped all further lectures and other public
utterances except for a few articles and interviews mostly on side-
issues and inventions, as indicated by the following titles: Electric
Meteorology; New Instruments for Producing Emotional Music;
The Psychology of Acoustics; Pure Gold and Iron from Sand; This
Machine May Largely Increase the World’s Gold

[page 228]
Output; Kinship of Man with Cell; Fruit and Vegetables Ripened
in a Few Hours by Concentrated Light Rays; Psychological
Aspects of Emotion.
In 1900 two articles by Gates appeared in Success magazine
“Can the Will Power Be Trained?” and “We Can Increase Our
Mental Power.” In 1903: “Science the First World Movement,”
and the next year, “Life a Property of Matter,” both in Suggestion
magazine. “The Relations and Development of the Mind and
Brain,” an unauthorized republication of an interview under Gates’
name was distributed by the Theosophical Society in 1904—
“selling on sight,” wrote the editor.
Psychology was a new science and a public curiosity in those
days; the Mind Art and brain-building were considered strange,
even bizarre. Queer articles appeared in the press. Many writers
of the day supposed that psychology meant to “psychologize,” in
the sense of hypnotize, and not seldom did Gates receive letters
asking for a test of his powers at treatment or occult demonstration.
“Do not fear misrepresentation and misunderstanding; whatever is
genuine and true will succeed in being accepted. In the first
presentation of a great series of truths there, are innumerable (and
inexorable) difficulties of exposition,” Gates wrote. “This must
especially be true of any attempt to expound mind that Dark
Continent of science, as one friend calls it. Shrouded in
speculation and mystery, psychology has but lately emerged into
the full light of experimental investigation, and is but beginning to
win for itself recognition. What must then be expected of a writer
who claims for it sole supremacy and points out a domain of
inductive metaphysic and an art of mentation? People have not
been accustomed to study their own subjective states
experimentally, and thus the very language that must be used in
describing them is unfamiliar.”
The new term psychurgy also came in for its share of
misinterpretation: as mental healing and what not. By contrast,
those who took the trouble to visit the laboratories were rewarded
with increased understanding and appreciation. One
[page 229]
such visitor, a well-known psychologist, Dr. Herman T. Lukens,
professor of education and teacher training at Pennsylvania’s
Southwest State Normal School, wrote a report of his visit for Dr.
Stanley Hall, who published it in his American Journal of
Psychology, in November 1898. It read in part as follows:
Elmer Gates covers the whole range of sciences. He

employs a force of assistants, machinists, and others. . . . He

proposes to put up a building in which will be museum,

laboratory and all apparatus needed to demonstrate every
known fact about some one science; then he will take a class
through that science by his method of work, which goes by
regular stages: 1, Sensations; 2, Images; 3, Concepts; 4, Ideas;
5, Thoughts 1st Order; 6, Thoughts 2d Order, etc. He has
records for twenty years of his own activity and environment:
thermic, barometric, electrical potential and other atmospheric
changes. He has readers working for him in the gigantic task
of sifting facts out of scientific books. He is working to get all
the alleged facts collected, then test these and weed out the
theories and mere “accepts,” thus reducing the great mass of
rubbish to a small compass of accessible facts. “A scientific
Bible, " as he says, “for what is more sacred than truth, or more
satanic than falsehood?" He showed me a great mass of
manuscript material. . . . He has a great mass of notes that have
been collecting for twenty years, and which he proposes to edit
in a series of books which will bring out his ideas better than
anything else he has thus far done. These will include the best
regimen for work, scientific rearing of children, method of
invention, encyclopedic Bible of Science, etc. . . .Gates is
affable and cordial, gave me unstintingly of his time and
attention, and spoke freely of everything. He seems to me to
have made a mistake in not publishing sooner. He is sincere,
has the scientific spirit, and is a man of original ideas who will
be more and more known as the years go by.
[page 230]
These early articles and interviews were full of mistakes and
careless reporting and do not accurately represent Gates’ later
views. Most of his articles were written at short notice; many were
accounts of interviews that were seldom proofread or corrected.
His friends, Professor McGee and Major Powell, as well as others,
said that by not publishing as he went along he was cheated of the
help of his contemporaries.
Why not? Gates was not trying to establish a reputation. He
said: “I have sufficiently experimented over the whole domain of
psychology and psychurgy to satisfy myself as to the nature and
scope of my future work. I was not willing to publish my
discoveries and methods, or to organize the work arising from
them, until I had finished all the various lines of experimental
investigation that might have important bearings upon my general
methods and plans, and give me a unitary view of the whole.”
And later: “This purpose to make a prolonged test of the Mind-
art required as much courage as I could summon because two
decades had already elapsed since I discovered the first step and

now I found it necessary or advisable to devote another decade

before offering it. I foresaw that these years would be more
expensive and require all the self-sacrifice of which I was capable
to withhold publication until ready, because I would be deprived of
the advantages which a true and full account would bring, and be
exposed, as I found out to my sorrow, to all the disadvantages
entailed by false and incomplete accounts of my work and to all
kinds of misrepresentation and misunderstanding. But it is
doubtful if I would have changed my purpose not to publish until
ready even if I could have foreseen the severe financial struggle or
the much prestige lost by not establishing priority in print, for my
conviction as to the prudence of my policy was very strong. Now
writing at last, despite all losses and disadvantages, I do not regret
the delay because I feel that so complex and important a subject
could not have been fully matured at an earlier period in my life.
Certain it is that much has been eliminated that would have been
prematurely published under the keen enthusiasm of an earlier age,
and much has
[page 231]
been added. Besides, the mentative art has now been practically
tested by over ten years’ application. My only regret is that I have
not the time to give this presentation a literary garb.”
And an advantage of foresight in hindsight that many would
appreciate: “Also I have had that further and delightful freedom of
expression which is due to my not having to defend statements
published earlier in my life.”
After he had built the small laboratory at Chevy Chase, it soon
became apparent to Gates that unless he could have more ample
facilities and find some arrangement to spend less time in making
money (as consulting inventor), he would not be able to complete
his planned series of researches soon enough to devote the best
remaining years, while at maximum vigor and originality, to the
practical application of his discoveries and the further researches
for which all previous work had been but the introduction and
general preparation. By overwhelming conviction, as well as by
the nature and scope of these researches, he considered it necessary
to accomplish certain lines of investigation before publishing a
systematic exposition, or to organize the first steps of an institution
to make them available to others. From the vantage of
accomplishment in 1905 he was able to survey the results from a
higher point of view and was glad he had been wise and
courageous enough under great difficulties to carry out his
conviction.
Accordingly, acting under what was then his best judgment, he
borrowed money for adequate buildings, additional equipment and

land, and researches, giving these properties and a certain list of

inventions as security. For certain other lines of research he
borrowed more money by giving as security liens against whatever
inventions might result. All these in September 1905, with accrued
interest, amounted to about $400,000, a debt that, he wrote,
seriously oppressed and for several years hampered his effort. “I
am nevertheless rejoiced,” he wrote, “that I was thereby enabled to
complete my researches. I was irrevocably determined, no matter
what else might happen, to get a synthetic view of my several lines
of research even if I
[page 232]
had to lose everything except honor, health, and mental ability. In
no other way known or available to me could I have made all the
scientific, inventive, and educational researches before 1917 or
1920, and kept these various patented inventions intact so by
payment of this debt they become my property to be used to
support the institution.” He considered that any other procedure
possible to his abilities and limitations would have prematurely
involved him in a series of mercantile or industrial enterprises for
which he was unprepared, requiring more time and attention than
his researches could permit. But this outcome was not all the
result of his planning. Circumstances and events forced him into
this seemingly unfortunate situation, and incidentally gave time
and opportunity to complete those further researches that were
fundamentally important to his plans.
What were some of these events? Gates desired a machine
shop at his laboratories to make instruments and apparatus, and to
equip one of his buildings for teaching. Francis H. Leggett, a
wealthy wholesale grocer of New York City, in December 1897,
offered to lend $50,000 for a one-half interest in this shop and
some thirty listed inventions, and would surrender all interests if
by December, 1899, the loan was repaid with 6 percent interest. If
not repaid, practical inventions were to be exploited commercially.
In mid-November, 1899, unable to repay, Gates called a meeting
of directors of the E. G. Company (which had been formed) to
request an extension, which seemed reasonable, as expected
patents had not yet been granted. But Mr. Leggett, who was old
and busy, had transferred his stock to a young relative who was not
rich and was anxious to exploit the inventions.
Gates would rather have lost all these inventions than be tied
up in development for at least four years. In his interview with the
directors he decided, contrary to usual business judgment, to keep
all commercial interests and motives in the background and stress
only the purely scientific and philanthropic aspects of his work
with which partnership obligations would interfere. “For the first

three hours,” he noted, “it seemed as if I would not be able to hold

my conscience-guidance regarding
[page 233]
dissolution of the Company. After due effort a partial promise was
secured to extend the option two weeks to raise $55,000, but
certain conditions were stipulated which made it doubtful. Not
knowing the precise business meaning of one of the exacted
conditions, I phoned Mr. Theodore J. Mayer, a friend of wide
business experience, for advice. ‘Better come out and hear Mr.
Leggett state his terms,’ I said. He came and in 30 minutes my
friend and I made a different deal by which for certain securities of
the E. G. Co. Mayer gave his check for $27,000 and I gave my
unsecured notes for $27,000 due in 6, 9, and 12 months. Mr.
Leggett turned over his entire interest, and took the 4 o’clock
Congressional Limited to New York. True to his philanthropic
spirit, Mayer did not do this for financial gain but because he
believed for the world’s sake this institution’s work ought not to be
stopped.” (Mayer was the man who subsidized the writing of those
early volumes.)
In March 1900, Gates noted in his diary that he was finally
ready, “except for certain business impediments,” to prepare his
book. “May I be able to write without distraction, quickly; then I
can stop to make money to carry out what it teaches. Let it be
centered upon the concrete things it is expected to accomplish;
namely, collection of mentative data; taxonomic museum-
laboratory; training of cooperative investigators; making the
institution self-supporting; ascertainment of truth as philanthropic
mission. Secondarily: understanding of the art of mentation;
conception of Omnism and Immanency of Mind; ultimate guidance
of truth; and so on.”
One of these “business impediments,” though, his gold-
separation inventions, he considered the possible means of
financial support for his institution and its endowment—“the vast
means needed, without getting it out of overworked and underpaid
toil.” These valuable and remarkable inventions, on which his
patent attorney remarked that more method patents were granted
than ever before to one inventor, were to prove both an asset and a
liability, but a powerful factor in his career. In June 1899, Gates
was invited to cruise down the Potomac in a government boat
[page 234]
by Secretary Mecklejohn, with Floyd B. Wilson of New York.
During the trip gold-separation processes were discussed, and
Gates was asked if he could devise a method of magnetically
separating gold from sand. Remembering that he had

diamagnetically separated non-magnetic substances in experiments

made in Germantown, he at once made a study of the subject, and
the next month, on July 4, he accomplished the diamagnetic
separation of gold from sand. By December he had filed patent
applications on methods of electrostatic, magnetic, and
diamagnetic separation. In eleven months, besides his other work,
these inventions were increased to one hundred devices resulting in
eleven method patents (plus five more allowed but not brought to
issue), fifteen apparatus patents and an art patent. His attorney
said, “Elmer Gates is the most original man in America. His
discoveries are fundamental and his patents are basic.”
Early in the work his neighbor, U.S. Secretary of Treasury
Lyman Gage, pointed out the advantage of working with wet
materials, and the next day Gates invented and tested a method.
In his magneto-static gold separator, particles of gold falling
through lines of force of a magnetic field were charged
electrostatically and then attracted to a collector of opposite
charge. Gold particles could be seen to jump eight or more inches;
flour, float, fine and rusty gold, were instantly and violently
attracted. That gold could be thus attracted was entirely new and
opposed to preconceived theories, and was disputed by all who had
not seen the unquestionable demonstration. The fundamental
method patents were granted as originally written, without change,
citation, or references against them. Native copper was separated
from crushed ore and tailings; and most if not all mechanically
mixed free metals could be separated.
These electrical separation methods were particularly
applicable to taking free gold, or gold-bearing minerals, from soils,
sands, gravels, wet or dry, the electrical cost being less than one
cent per cubic yard of material handled. According to U.S.
Geological Survey reports, there were available thousands of
square miles of desert too dry to work or placers too low in
[page 235]
values to be worked by existing methods. The dry placers offered
the most commercial opportunity because these new methods were
the only means without water, and opened up many new and little-
studied areas, several in North America. As a result of extensive
publicity, over three thousand samples of gold-bearing materials
were sent in from all over the continent. They were carefully
examined. More samples were obtained from the most interesting,
and then assistants were sent to investigate the most promising,
from which at least half a dozen valuable areas were selected.
Many visitors saw the demonstration of these separation
methods; many mining experts reported favorably. Ever receptive
to the ancient lure of free gold, the press gave widespread

coverage; such as illustrated full-page spreads in metropolitan

Sunday newspapers and illustrated articles in magazines like
Pearson’s. Professor J. W. Spencer, former chief, Canadian
Geological Survey, was employed to investigate magnetic sands in
Canada. Professor Peter Fireman (U.S.D.A. chemist) went to
Paris, Sweden, and England and looked up mining matters for
Gates. Governor Brady of Alaska discussed gold mining with him.
Many others were interested: Floyd Wilson; Z. B. Babbitt; and J.
W. Seligman & Co. of New York who ordered samples from
Montana and guaranteed expenses. And significantly, Mayer
became much interested in the business prospects.
Gold, the precious metal, bringer of grace and greed, master of
conscience of man and state since antiquity! How would it affect
the psychurgic work of Elmer Gates?
By mid 1900, $161,000 was due on the debt to Mayer. An
extension was secured by finally granting one-half interest in
magnetic iron-making and agglomerating inventions, instead of the
one-third in all inventions, as Mayer had insisted. But in October,
to pay his note to Leggett, Gates made another deal with Mayer to
give one-half of all profits, stocks, and interest in inventions on the
list, all rights to be surrendered upon repayment. “I cannot come
to believe there is danger in advice,” Gates noted, “yet if I had
acted alone and not sought business assistance
[page 236]
of friends I would have accomplished more in my mining matters.
I now know this to be true. Mayer thinks there will be no success
unless my matters are all in his hands. I know there will be none
unless they are all in my hands, so I may without interference
apply to commerce the laws of mentation. For a man pretending to
have no interest in my affairs save one of philanthropy he has
made a very significant effort that is not so in attempting to get
control of my inventions. Yet I am not surprised.”
One of the most interesting phenomena of an introspective
study of his mind, Gates then observed, was that as soon as anyone
acquired a financial interest in one of his inventions, he no longer
had any interest in either its mechanical improvement or its
commercial development. This attitude he could not reason out of
his mind; he could force himself to act, but spontaneous interest
was gone.
Many and varied efforts were made for deals on the mining
methods—near deals and disappointments, attempts to organize
companies. A sample telegram expressing the self-interested
optimism of promoters that led to failure was: “Congratulations.
Organization of 1,000,000 company 250,000 paid in. Send me 100
at once.” There was another promoter who telegraphed so often

that the money would be raised “in another ten days” that this
phrase became a household slogan for procrastination.
“The long siege of worry and sickness has weakened me,”
Gates wrote dejectedly in his diary. “The financial worries have
been serious and persistent. My head machinist betrayed my
confidence and revealed to opponents my business plans. Have
been threatened with lawsuits for debts—a severe trial. . . .I am
getting too critical to write my book with that complete confidence
and enthusiasm I once possessed. I no longer feel like refuting a
whole philosophical theory in one sentence. I am no longer so
eager for elegant rhetoric. I wonder if I am getting tired only and
if my zeal will return. What is the object of all this effort to found
an institution? Is it to live comfortably? No, for it has involved
me in constant worry. To benefit the world?
[page 237]
Yes—but rather secondary to the innate urging to find out truth
and fully express myself. I must utter myself as the poet does when
in his frenzy.”
In a letter to a friend in December 1900, he wrote that his
laboratories were costing $2,000 a month, which could be reduced
to $467 to enable him to do experimental work in connection with
preparation of the book and to show inventions and experiments.
The main reason to run the laboratory was to write his book and to
keep on making the various psychologic records at which he had
been engaged for so long and the interruption of which, now so
nearly complete, would be a calamity.
“For a long time I have made no record in this Diary (since
March 5),” Gates recorded July 19, 1901. “Beginning with last
January my main creditor undertook to take advantage of his
position as holder of my properties and inventions as securities and
set to work to own them outright—the incentive being the value of
my mining inventions, and having been incited by my head
machinist. At first a deal by which I could have paid him the
$196,000 was upset by him. Several subsequent deals have met
the same fate because of his claims to ownership of a half interest
and of his attitude toward any deal which would leave me any
considerable share. I had a written release from him by which if
repayment was made by July 12, everything would be reassigned
to me. This he curtailed by a technical process to April 12. My
New York friends claimed to have secured an extension by
payment of money which I raised with difficulty, but they only
secured a personal option for themselves! Recently a Philadelphia
friend secured a written agreement to assign these securities to me
for repayment of money due and 1/7th the stock of a mining

company to be formed, and on this we have option until October

15.”
In September 1902, on a short vacation, he noted that his
business affairs threatened to interfere with freedom of action by
disturbing his mentative dominancy. His feeling was that he
should cheerfully let that business situation drift and settle itself:
neither aid nor hinder it, but commence his ideal of World
[page 238]
Work, be busy with it and let everything else take care of itself.
This was not a new course for him. It was well described later in
this diary note of 1904:
“Would it be safe for me to experimentally determine the value
of giving the reins to Tao? [The Way of Lao-Tse, the course of
events.] One hesitates to experiment with life’s events and yet I
have always been doing it; many times I have risked my whole
financial and social future in an experiment with my own affairs. I
have time and again hazarded my total business chances in an
experiment with Tao. I have given up off-hand the opportunity for
which I worked for years. I have thrown valuable advantages and
rights aside as readily as most would dally with a desire to go to a
lecture. I have given up at least two reputations. I have given up
in an hour emoluments for which many would work a lifetime.
Fearing I would obstruct a process of inward growth I dropped a
matter that would have brought me millions, and I can do it again.
I am destined to experiment with and upon life. I am desperately
in search of some great truth concealed in Consciousness and its
relation to purposes and Cosmic events. In human life there is a
constant panorama of successive events which life does not plan or
will—a cosmic becoming is taking place.
“I am quite sure, as a matter of belief, that life is not only worth
living but is the one greatest prize, an ineffable boon! It is
impossible for me to get the slightest feeling or wish not to be.”
But late in his career he wrote that he had perhaps learned to trust
somewhat too much in the course of events. We will see.
One experiment with his life: In early 1902 Gates circulated
among friends and others interested “A Preliminary
Announcement of the Organization of a Board of Trustees to
Receive and Administer a Fund for Establishing a Department for
Teaching one of the Sciences at the E. G. Laboratories.” From
many responses with signed acceptances, a board was selected.
Gates wrote: “Beyond comparison my best and weightiest
testimonials are from those who having accepted, thereby entered
into the non-public part of my work and their names cannot be
used.”

[page 239]
One practical-minded friend declined because there was no fund to
administer, and that seemed the sad fact. Another wrote: “You are
engaged in a great, grand, and much needed work. Your plans are
broad, comprehensive, and worthy of the spirit you have always
emphasized in your investigations.” A copy of this ten-page
announcement is included in the diary, signed in acceptance by his
friend former Governor Hoyt, but further details are lacking.
Gates terminated his arrangement with Leggett because of what
he called a conscience-guidance. He wrote of it: “First results of
subconscious mentation is that my conscience tries to normalize
my motives. Do the best I know and it will lead to good
consequences; it is the greatest guidance. I have shrunk from
trusting myself totally to what conscience seemed to demand; it
was an indistinct insight that I was not always trusting truth but
only what I believed to be truth; another step in my career.
“The conscience-event comes into consciousness with an
overpowering awe that leaves the mind totally submissive and
profoundly reposeful. They are moments when one’s career is
shaped; generally not many in a lifetime; some never have them.
The particular practice I am now engaged in demonstrates that by
proper kind of effort one may continue to have them. Introspective
dirigation and awareness of it coupled with a profound desire for
better and higher usefulness, kept up for some days, leads to
conscience crises and career events. For one can enter a higher
moral career many times. No matter how high, there is always one
step higher; or how useful, another way to be more useful; or how
much knowledge, always just as much more to know. If one
definitely seeks the higher steps in moral growth and social career
he can get them ad infinitum.
“I have not reasoned out the conscience-events described; each
decision formed itself as an inexorable and important command of
my whole nature. In the normal course of life such events are rare.
I have by quiescence, volitional dirigation, introspective dirigation,
and Awareness-dominancy, systematically
[page 240]
promoted that kind of functioning and secured many such events.
Insofar as their decisions have been applied they have invariably
proved successful; for instance, the unexpectedly satisfactory
termination of the E. G. Co. difficulty.”
He further had this to say: “The mind is sum of its conscious
states; its predilections and facilities determine its future. We
become what we are by the motives we adopt; we can occupy
whatever states (motives) we choose ever more and more rightly
by approval and re-functioning of the approvals. Disapprovals

disconnect us from Cosmic approvals; approvals connect us with

the All, rectifying conscience. Awareness approvals recreate
conscience, associatively integrate our minds with ‘That-which-is,’
with what has succeeded in the world. We try only to the extent
we have interest in things, hence effort arises out of esthesias;
emotive mentation will rule the world. Make an inventory of plans
and purposes and motives and submit them one by one to the
Awareness.
“Do not mistake conscience for Awareness-approvals; you test
your conscience to see if it is right. Try it. There is that which is
aware of your conscience and judges it according to knowledge
and feeling and doing, and that higher tribunal is the Awareness.
Get that on your side by adopting its approvals, and not merely the
majority but the Totality is with you.”
This particular part of his “Introspective Diary” did not reveal
his whole inner life nor all his plans and convictions, but only such
as came as conscience-events during the periods of this special
seeking for guidance. He submitted his whole life and plans
irrevocably to this guidance and expected to succeed in his
immediate work if he did his part.
“It seems to me that only by means of an honest introspective
diary can one study correctly the motives and events which guide
one’s life,” Gates wrote. “Always there is a daily dominant motive
and environment (physical and social) condition. My motive today
is to meet a financial obligation and thus take advantage of a great
opportunity pressed upon me by circumstances; but there is a
deeper motive to devote all my time to my book, and
[page 241]
organize the scientific-religious features of my work. An
introspective diary should exhibit real motives and environmental
influences. People want my book first and my inventions second.
There is some prejudice against my work. There is a great demand
for my thought. These are environmental factors. I am eager to
help humanity by some great discovery about the mind; eager to
write my book; to make experiments; to educate my children and
live with and be near them all my life.”
Of his home life he wrote: “I could not preserve my health
without love for those I love. Celibacy is unnatural, and only in
parentage do the greater virtues find sustenance. I have purposely
kept this side of my life out of this study because I am seeking
intellective and not emotive dominancy. It has however been an
hourly present factor. Many times during the day I must seek my
loved ones, even for a moment, and in the evening when the day’s
serious effort is done, I do not know how I could continue to work
if it were not for the domestic and social relations in my own

happy home with wife, children, relatives, and friends. These are
the hours when a brooding influx of happy emotions rests me and
prepares for an undisturbed, happy, restful sleep. I nearly always
retire at 8 P.m. and awake at 6 A.M. Sleep is disturbed by dreams
only once or twice a year. My children have been a most exalting
and beneficent influence. To love them and be loved by them is a
benediction, a blessing immediately and remotely. I do not believe
in a philosophy or religion which does not favor parentage. I never
go to the theatre or opera no matter how well I enjoy it but I regret
to lose the peaceful, restful, loveful evening at home. I do not
believe a normal intellectual life can exist apart from a normal
emotive life, nor apart from a normal conative life of useful
activity.”
In September he started a series of experiments in
“spontaneous mentation,” his first systematic attempt to discover a
method of applying the Mind Art to business, to discover the
psychologic and psychurgic principles of industry, commerce, and
institutional work. Heretofore he had planned his main mentative
[page 242]
effort by intellective functions mostly; now he would follow an
untried form of the Mind Art and let his whole mind take its own
way and work out its tendencies, unhampered by prejudices of
habits and plans. He would more definitely study the emotive
tendencies and functions, giving them full sway. Of course, he had
been doing this all his life, but never had it been his main work.
Over twenty years of work might have landed him in ruts. There
might be predilections, reflexes of cosmic tendencies, emotive
urgencies, immanent undercurrents, superconscious influences,
natural capacities, that had not been sufficiently functioned. For a
year or more he would allow his mind all its spontaneous activities,
hoping to learn something new about business and consciousness.
His idea of a great institution had expanded into a plan for
cooperatively organizing the world’s scientific investigators,
inventors, and teachers according to psychurgic methods. To carry
out this plan some business method was needed in keeping with
the principles of psychurgy, and it must be discovered and applied
before he could hope to get sufficient money to start. He had
always felt that he would make sufficient inventions that if
properly handled would start the institutional work and possibly
endow it; and that inventions of his and of pupils would support it.
He would make enough in some way then unknown, he was sure,
and inventions should be handled as part of the institutional
organization. To organize the world’s leading minds
cooperatively, with science for their Bible and psychurgy for their

method, required that commerce and industry be an integral and

functional part. How, remained for him to discover.
In applying the art of mentation to a science he would first
collect and psychologically classify its intellective data into
sensations, images, concepts, ideas, and thoughts, then proceed by
the rules. But when he tried to apply this art to business, there was
no corresponding science whose data could be thus classified.
Some new form had to be found; psychurgy had to discover how to
apply itself to business mentation. His systematic approach
[page 243]
included all possible expedients and accessories, even an assistant,
or “mentor.”
“An effort like this one,” Gates pointed out, “requires
maintenance of intense desires and yearning for the knowledge
sought or guidance-feeling, and intense longing to accomplish the
ends. It is a constant prayer—an esthesic prayer that sets up those
functionings in the mind which will lead to its answer. At present I
need an overmastering feeling that shall be decisive in its urgency
and make me feel this is what I must do and only this. That is, I
seek emotive mentation that shall drive me to do the right thing,
just as artistic feeling impels the painter, the musical feeling leads
the composer, and the poetic feeling leads the orator, to follow out
his genius, to realize the destiny of his character. This emotive
guidance must come out of my inmost nature and be based on
normal emotion, and express my truest and best meaning; and also
the deeper guidance of entheasm—for a dirigation to me from the
larger world-life of which I am a part.
“I feel all the foregoing accomplishment and pain is but a
preliminary to a grander opportunity. Science and the Mind-art
have a religious import. The world needs them now more than
anything else, but if any one religious or political belief were to
espouse the movement others would hold off. . . .Yet the modern
spirit of science is fermenting in all vocations and religions, and
out of it is rising a world movement with which I should identify
myself rather than any one; become part of it, lead it; or rather not
I but science and scientific method will lead. How? That is the
supreme question for me.
“I seek emotive guidance: first, to view my work from one step
higher than that I am to teach to see the trend and decide the mode,
policy and method of organizing the institutional work as part of
the world-movement; second, relating to business management of
my affairs, otherwise I might so shape them to interfere with my
higher ideals. Later I want to make that great discovery relating to
Consciousness which I have long

[page 244]
expected someone to make. Proper management of my affairs will
lead to that culture and experimental work that will make this
discovery possible; always I feel if my consciousness were a little
more vivid and if I knew a little better how to do it I would
discover a whole new world of facts that would revolutionize
human conditions.
“Get all religious beliefs to cooperate along lines not requiring
agreement on these beliefs, but based on their mutual interest in
industrial, scientific, esthetic, and social problems demanding
concerted action. All classes should contribute their best minds to
carry on the work by psychurgic methods, focusing their combined
action upon problems of equal utility. Then interest in and
knowledge of science would become immediate and vital. The
next step towards recognition of the religious import of science and
its characteristic revelation would follow. All systems of belief
and nationalities and communities are equally interested in the
actual knowledge of science (not its theories), and its application to
human affairs.
“The world finds immediate need of the separation of the sum
of actual knowledge from its accompaniment of hypothesis and
falsehood, of means of experimentally determining the actual data
of a science and properly teaching it; for a body of trained
mentators with facilities for devoting their time to the
ascertainment of truth for its own sake as well as application. This
requires the cooperation of all peoples because no one race or class
possesses all human knowledge. Minds must be excerpted as well
as books, and it involves a great amount of labor, observation, and
experiment—too great for any one country or class. The
immediate application of science will vary according to people and
community.
“It will take more labor and money than the Suez and Panama
Canals but will be far more important; it will cost less than the
great wars and will not require the sacrifice of lives, and results
will be a victory for peace and progress that will do more for
civilization than any former achievement. Science makes for
righteousness and its extension and application
[page 245]
by the superior methods of psychurgy is the supreme opportunity
and duty of the age.
“The growth of science has been created by minds from every
people and belief. All other movements have in comparison been
local affairs. There has been no world religion. There is no
exception to science being the only world movement, and science
is the character of a growing revelation. . . . Insofar as it is

knowledge it is truth, and truth alone should be the basis of

religion. This world movement of religious science and scientific
religion is arising. It is not yet recognized but it is more
profoundly religious than all tradition, myths, and beliefs not
founded on inductive knowledge; it is based on the growing body
of demonstrated science. Its miracles of invention and discovery
are ever before us and are the splendors of modern life. What is
needed is the recognition that science is religious—is revelation,
that its content constitutes the ‘ought’ of mankind, the outline of its
duty and opportunity, the chart of its progress, the program of the
future.
“How to take advantage of the current of this world movement,
direct its flow, incorporate the work of the Mind-art and do it
naturally to aid and not hinder is the problem. The task of
psychurgic organization is getting the best minds of each class and
community engaged in solving their special as well as general
problems. It happens that the local interests are inextricably tied
up with the best interests of all neighboring communities and
peoples and the welfare of the world at large.
“One step in my larger insight: write my book in constant
reference to the concrete results of organizing a world movement
in science by applying psychurgy to group centers of each race,
nation, class, cult, belief, community. Induce the best minds of
each class to learn the Mind-art; a world organization of the best
minds. Readers will see the object of the work rising out of it—not
as an arbitrary plan of mine but as part of the world movement
based on the natural tendency of mental growth—and will at once
commence to help.” This became the theme and purpose of The
Book—The Twelve Volumes.
[page 246]
This insight was an event important in shaping his plans. A
some-what similar description formed the last part of his article
“Immortality from New Standpoints” in R. J. Thompson’s Proof of
Life After Death, published in 1902. This article attracted
considerable and enthusiastic attention. “From it the magazines
quoted widely what I said about Science as the First World
Movement,” Gates noted. “Prof. Larkin of Lowes Observatory in
a recent article is enthusiastic about my remarks on Consciousness
cosmologically considered. I gave no pains to this article, just
dictated and dashed off in careless language a few remarks about
subjects I have thought of all my life. People want to be shown the
moral and religious import of science.”
Gates had expected to discover the business method of the
institutional work, but so far there was not even a mentor to aid in
his attempt at emotive mentation to discover it, no one whose

dirigative effect on his conscious and subconscious functions

produced business ideas. He had to judge by emotive approvals
because a business idea could not at once be experimentally tested
in the laboratory. Not an ordinary business method; that was not
ethical. He could not determine the practical value by intellective
methods but only by intuition or emotive approval, frequently
repeated under all kinds of personal and subconscious premonition.
Two kinds of mental effort must be carried on, dirigative and
introspective receptivity simultaneously by two minds sufficiently
en rapport to mutually influence each other. The mentor, or helper,
must maintain an active dirigation while he maintained a passive
introspection. As one feels a presence, or a rising mood, so Gates
said he felt an approval or disapproval when he held an idea long
before both minds. A companion, helper, associate, co-worker,
influences one’s mental functioning by every gesture, tone, look,
suggestion, opinion, approval or disapproval, argument, and mood.
Minds interact consciously and subconsciously especially during
quiescence, dirigation, introspection, and awareness; by their
congeniality, presence and other ways.
He described the helper as one who by taste, predilection,
[page 247]
and occupation must be an altruist and a helper of people; must be
congenial, healthful, moral, ethical, and religious by feeling, and
capable of quickly causing and maintaining a long dirigation, of
unselfishly working for human good; must long for knowledge,
and be capable of giving sufficient time to enable him to get up a
dominancy (about three weeks under favorable conditions) and
then maintain it long enough for results (about ten days for each
group of ideas).
On May 6, 1902, his forty-third birthday, such a helper was
found, and after a few weeks’ preliminary instruction the first
attempt was started July 7. Gates began to get into dominancy by
July 21, when the helper had to leave. He tried again on
September 21 but failed—had begun to get results by September
30, when the helper had to go home. No attempt was possible
during the winter; plans were made for the next summer, but the
helper went to Europe. But at last, on September 19, 1903, they
tried again, and dominancy was attained by September 29, and by
October 7 the “what” of the institutional business method was
achieved, when the helper was forced to leave, and no further
attempts were ever possible.
The first definite result was the necessity of a socio-statistical
study and inventory of actual business wants and productions of
every community, occupation, people, country; tables of wants and
needs; what the arts and sciences can supply; what people can

make or pay for; and which first. Inventors should first study
actual needs. Today a business survey is almost routine, although
probably not so complete as here intended, but in 1903 it was an
innovation. A detailed study also was indicated of business
founded on patents.
The “what” taught Gates that his inventions must be part of the
business of the institutional work and World Work, that the
business must be ethical. The previous summer he had learned it
must be sociurgic and by group mentation; this summer he learned
in what way it must be ethical, how it must be based on the
quantitative study of needs and desires and the world’s possible
total supplies, giving inventor, producer, and consumer
[page 248]
pro rata interests in profits. It must select the best minds of each
class and train them in solving problems of that art. Thus it must
organize people and that industry sociurgically, and that
department of the institution was to be functionally a part of that
kind of world activity. This he described as the“what.”
But the “how” and “when”? If he had devoted the summer to
it, August to October, he was sure he would have gotten all of it.
However, he was face to face with the main problem of his “very
difficult career”: how to handle his inventions, and those of
prospective pupils, as an integral part of the work and at the same
time of the world movement; how to support them upon an ethical
business plan with equal gain to all; and subsidiary to these, how to
get out of debt. Unless he were able to take the next step, he
believed he would not get money on any plan. He wanted six
weeks of uninterrupted effort to make a dominancy on business;
for two years he had tried unsuccessfully to get the time.

[page 249]
CHAPTER 13
The Laboratory Epic—Part Two
. . . the all-impelling inward urge which drives the mind of a

discoverer ever on and on.—ELMER GATES
A new factor, Gates noted, had arisen in his mind: he must

establish a writing dominancy and maintain it throughout all else
he undertook, so that by the time he discovered the business plan
his book would be ready. This would require much preparation, a
high dominancy, and finally the writing mood and frenzy—the
inspiration. He had never obtained emotive approval to publish,
and saw that he would not until the book contained the business
method as self-executing. In five attempts at business discoveries
so far, two were productive, but all brought results regarding
Consciousness, pointing unmistakably to a grand discovery about
it, perhaps a new capacity. Each effort had also brought various
inventions.
On October 13, 1903, he entered in his “Introspective Diary”:
“What are my immediate problems, opportunities, duties,
difficulties? Let me study myself impartially, look the world
squarely in the face. Let me stand remote and from a point of view
one hundred years hence, judge myself.
“As I look back upon this present I say, Gates, the immediate
blinds you, in a whirl of dust of details, worried by momentary
[page 250]
trivialities. You should steadfastly fix your attention only on the
one great work of your life.
“And I from the Present, shout to the Future and say, alas, it is
alone by hourly details that I live and work. I am immersed in the
present like a fish in water. I am compelled to use means to
accomplish results. I cannot well enough descry the future to be
guided by it or forget the present.
“The future, from the standpoint of what shall have been
accomplished a hundred years from now, sees only that part of my
Work which shall then survive, and it whispers to me: ‘Your mind
will solve the remaining problems for you just as it has before—
you are to write the Baedeker of the Mind, to outline a mentative
World Work that shall be self-executing and will set in motion the
active forces of your time; you are to publish and apply your
discoveries, and to seek further ones; to establish a science of
Consciousness and an art of Mind-using, and perhaps a new power
of Consciousness, which like the discoveries of fire and language,

shall open new capacities to humanity. The Cosmic Power is

working in and through you—Tao is expressing itself, be patient
and keep on!’
“Ah, how one likes to dream dreams. Yet I do truly think I
have created the science of Consciousness and the art of mind-
getting and using and these are fundamentally important. I do truly
think I am the first to think out a self-executing method of
organizing the only world movement ever possible; namely, the
religion that looks upon science as its revelation, upon the
Mentative art as its method, upon trained teachers as its apostles,
upon trained minds as its Redeemers and Revelators, upon
schoolhouses and laboratories as its churches, upon commerce and
industry as its holy missionary work; the first religious movement
that puts wholly aside as guidance all tradition, belief, and theory,
and looks upon knowledge and normal feeling as the only direct
‘word of God.’”
He remarked about his writing that all evidences of enthusiasm
and feeling should not be expunged, as is common in scientific
literature; the emotional standpoint is often at least as
[page 251]
important as the intellectual. If the reader is to be persuaded to act
out his convictions, his whole nature must be aroused. Gates saw
as a definite goal the theme of the Twelve Years’ work, to directly
augment and multiply by ten the esthesias of the human race, to
organize it in connection with the fine arts, to evolve it into a
worship, a new continent of joy, to open up the science of esthesia
and the art of it. Twenty-eight years before, he had seen the
problem of the intellect to discover knowledge better and to invent
ways to apply it; to get more mind and learn how to use it. But
throughout these years more mind meant merely more intellect.
Now he realized that it meant equally more esthesia more
important even than intellect. Then he stood before the problem of
intellection with insights just as crude as now before the vaster and
far more difficult one of esthesia—to collect, verify,
psychologically classify the esthesias, provide facilities for
teaching them, to give humanity more pleasure and bliss!
He was much influenced by the law that business is a sociurgic
activity and by the ethical law that business must give equal gain to
all; that is, he explained, the insight is that social phenomena are
largely dominated by commercial and industrial business
transactions, which to the extent they are for personal gain and
unregulated private enterprise are in conflict with these laws. All
politico-governmental or socialistic attempts at public ownership
are fraught with warfare, disaster, and failure. As soon as business
is planned and carried out as a sociurgic activity by the functional

organization of the trained minds of each class scientifically and

inventively solving its problems, then all private ownership and
personal business ventures will not, he emphasized, be abolished,
as is often thought, but directed scientifically as subordinate
departments of the whole sociurgic activity of an industrial group.
As soon as business is planned and carried out by the ethical law of
equal gain to all, poverty and ostentatious opulence will give way
to universal competency and peace. This means a sociurgic
organization of other activities, which can come about not
politically but sociurgically, by putting at the head something that
is not a party or personal leader, something
[page 252]
impersonal whose right cannot be questioned; namely,
demonstrated science.
Mentation is fundamentally a social product—the result of
interaction between a living organism and its cosmic environment.
Sensating, imaging, and other intellections are social products.
Language is wholly social. Mind has no meaning except as an
adaptation to environment.
Gates marveled at the elaborate and well-tested techniques for
business in use throughout the world. Amazing were the many
methods and means for detecting dishonesty and speculation “so
one feels ashamed that the race to which he belongs has to be so
systematically and carefully watched to keep it from stealing, as if
barbarians not to be trusted.” Business was carried on only for
profit and had not invaded the domain of ethics; it was moral only
so far as honesty and promptness were concerned. Competition
was carried to the utmost, and false values were created by wrong
methods of distribution and duties. Except for a few extempore
attempts at cooperative ventures started without scientific study,
Gates felt safe to assert, no business had been founded for its
primary purpose of obtaining maximum benefit to producer and
consumer. During these years Gates made all kinds of business
propositions to people in order to study them and their business
ideas. He noticed that their expressed principles and their intended
actions when they thought money could be made were generally
very different. He thus acquired valuable knowledge about
businessmen’s motives.
In his struggles to finance his investigations by
commercializing inventions, Gates often had his main purpose
misunderstood and his efforts frustrated by a typical business point
of view. “Most business men,” he wrote, “find it hard to believe
that a sensible man can be ‘such a fool’ as to devote his life to a
work that does not bring in immediate cash; they regard a man as a
‘mere dreamer’ who will deliberately devote his life to doing

things ‘for a posterity he will never personally meet and know.’ (I

was asked: What has posterity done for you?) They cannot
[page 253]
believe that any one can find highest satisfaction and completest
self-expression in a devotion to pure science or in researches for
the sake of the future; they cannot understand the all-impelling
inward urge which DRIVES the mind of a discoverer ever on and
on. They do not feel that overwhelming conviction that LEADS to
a total consecration of the mind, with all its abilities and genius-
capacities MOBILIZED towards some high purpose within the
scope of its predilections; no one but a creative worker can feel the
thrill and supreme joy of bringing to the world, now or for
posterity, the fruits of one’s own originality.”
But valuable as these insights were, his mind refused to
mentate on business, to take up practical matters. “When I ought
to be making dollars,” he wrote, “I am all wrapped up in
psychology.” For instance, in October 1903, he discovered a new
domain, the “telic” series of states, or the “processives,” as
elsewhere described. “I am much pleased with the mentative
results of the last two days,” his diary records. “This is the real
kind of progress that will live long after my personal struggles and
my institution are forgotten. Such a telic whole as a unit can battle
with others for dominancy. The naming of such units is the
taxonomy of conations. A conation is just such a telically
connected series of states and functions. Business has been utterly
forgotten. What is business for anyhow when sciences are being
discovered and arts improved?”
But some kind of business had to be transacted for even a
precarious living. With his major inventions, as well as many
others, tied up in the big debt, other means had to be found. They
were new inventions. It was easy for him to get wholly into the
inventive mood. He greatly enjoyed inventing, until the problem
was solved. Many times he was wholly dominant for several
months, producing scores of inventions. In March 1903, a deal
was made giving him $12,500 to develop his methods relating to
diamonds (improved Moissan process and an X-ray separation
process), and he took up making synthetic rubies, and making large
rubies from small natural ones. First he had
[page 254]
John A. Brashears of the Allegheny Observatory near Pittsburgh
make a solar focus, a 30-inch reflector of 20-inch focus, which
after several corrections produced a solar image 0.17 inch in
diameter, which Gates considered very good. On December 18 a
ruby was melted by sunlight alone. But while he waited for the

solar (radiothermic) focus to be completed, other means were

invented and tested, such as his hot-jet and incandescent gas
furnace using gas from the electric arc, or gas electrodes. “Today,”
his record goes, “worked at incandescent gas mantle furnace to
show my assistant, Draper, my new ideas, and at one minute before
11 A.M. two small rubies were happily united into one. Its
dichroism and other properties remained unchanged. Draper was
so excited his hands were like ice. When the two rubies melted
they jumped together through a thirty-second of an inch and
formed one almost perfectly round ball. But last night I discovered
a better way: the gas pressure furnace.
“The mind in its progress towards some new truth necessarily
follows a logical and taxonomic course, an orbit. But what always
amazes me,” Gates observed, “is the way the mind seems to pursue
(subconsciously, super-consciously or immanently) a seemingly
planned course. It seems to foresee that in solving a problem
certain preliminary and intermediate steps must be taken, and takes
them at a time when I can see no reason. The invention of my
furnace is an illustration.” His original simple experiments led to
valuable methods of electric and gas welding, and fusing, shaping,
and cutting metals. The radiothermic focus had become obsolete.
In 1903 he also considered making deals on new inventions:
spiral-screw elevator, refrigerator, method of cooling lathe tools,
metal grate blocks, electric hot saw, gasoline motor for saws and
lathes, hollow nail with central fastener, pocket reservoir fountain
pen with tube, fly-box, X-toy, nonmagnetizable watch, protective
wiring for screen doors, wire screen electric-welded or junctions
heated and stamped, platinum-wire laboratory furnace, kettle with
integral combustion space, individual electric water
[page 255]
heater, beveled-plate rangefinder for photographers, automatic
pencil, house heater with adjustable flow of air (“the poor man’s
heater”), X-rays to make air or water a better electrical conductor,
method to cataphoretically distribute carbon in steel more
uniformly, carry out bubbles, sonitically shake out specks, let a
stream of molten steel run out in a trough, and test it electrically
for proportions, magnetic picture toy, induction coil in vacuum for
lighting, metal furniture, welded thin metal sheets corrugated in
honeycomb, mechanical self-blocking locomotive signal, and so
on.
He also became interested in the measurement of the relative
distances of stars, as proposed by his friend Professor Charles H.
Hinton, physicist and mathematician, who had been a computer at
the Naval Observatory. Gates’ application of the Mind Art soon
produced a solution, his microphotogoniometer, which measured

the divergence of light rays by a new and simple method,

successful in simple laboratory tests. Hinton worked out the
divergence and reported it as enormous. The device could also be
used for geodetic surveying or minute measurements.
“What astonishes me most in my affairs,” Gates observed, “is
that my mind can busy itself with recondite problems of stellar
measurement while my financial affairs threaten to give serious
trouble and I have not next month’s living expenses assured. What
astounds me is the calm, imperturbable way my mind goes about
such a matter, as if it had nothing else to do with weeks of idleness
at hand. My mind simply ignores pressing matters. Even when
trying to decide about paying bills my mind gets a new insight into
astronomy and exults, and lays before me a problem requiring
some weeks and some thousands of dollars. Of course I could stop
it, but I feel a sort of desperate desire to risk it and see what
happens. Is it possible that the mind can be so captivated with its
subject as to become indifferent to its welfare? Unfortunately the
history of genius lends color to this state of affairs. The normal
social condition would have provided for the employment of
genius: the man who can
[page 256]
compose a symphony, invent a cotton gin, discover a calculus,
explore the unknown, is so important to the public need that
society could afford to support him and his work. It may be that
the mind feels what its rights are and its support ought to be, and
acts accordingly.”
There were so many creditors, he noted, that handling them
reminded him of the game of seeing how many corks can be kept
under water by pushing them down with a cane as they bob up.
Sometimes they bobbed up faster than he could push them down,
especially when a new one arose, with hardly enough time to get
his breath. The effort to keep his mind on business was like
holding a weight with outstretched arm. With ample inventive
assets and to spare, he was astounded at the constant struggle for
money. He was tired of it all. However, on the brighter side the
diary records. “This long struggle when every two months I have
to devise some new way to make a living is a good training. I
could go without references or introductions into any town in the
world and without a cent start up in several months. That’s the
trouble. I know my power too well. I allow myself every few
months to get without a dollar and without any coming in. Then
when I just have to get money I put my brains to work and get it.
How? Never twice alike. It takes too much energy and makes
gray hairs.”

A few months later he wrote: “This struggle has been a great

help in almost every way. No time has been lost. The real work
has been getting more right in my mind; am better able to guide the
whole movement, stronger and better equipped in every way for
my mission. My courage is stronger, judgment better, knowledge
of people greater, my influence in the world has been steadily
growing. I am not far from success.
“To get a motive, a clearly defined purpose with its inducement
of desires, hopes, ambitions, dominant in the attention and conduct
is the road to success. The outcome of a man’s life is based on
what he does; what he accomplishes is based on his conduct—his
work, and this is the outcome of his purposes, in turn of his
persistent motives—of his esthesias. Out of esthesias
[page 257]
arise purposes which to be carried out require knowledge, which is
a tool; the intellect is a tool used to satisfy the esthesias.
“Intellections are an expedient tool of the struggle for
existence, evolved as the fittest method of enabling a creature to
satisfy its wants and escape enemies. Knowledge of itself and
surroundings is indubitably the only way. Its wants drive it to seek
satisfaction and this is the beginning of motives, purposes,
conduct. Knowledge is required to satisfy esthesias; its energy of
effort and persistence of conduct are proportional to intensity of
esthesias; hence esthesic training and development are the basis of
ethical and moral training; at last a clear psychologic basis.
Taxonomic association and re-functioning and introspection
augment the intensity of the esthesias and thus the force which
drives the engine of life.”
Another problem considered with his work was accepting aid
from people of various beliefs and cults, such as the mystics
generally. Gates had refused to lecture to scores of their societies
or to write for their papers or affiliate with their movements;
refused hundreds of occult, pseudoscientific and Psychical research
societies. Some wrote: “You would be surprised to what extent
your public expressions are in use among us. We look upon you as
one of the great Revelators to humanity.” He considered their
methods not scientific; yet it would have been easy to have become
a foremost influence directing several million people toward better
methods. But he could not risk having them create the wrong
impression by quoting him for their purposes.
Interspersed with his diary records of financial struggle would
often crop up a note regarding Consciousness such as that the
study of it is as natural as the study of nature. On the day of his
creditor-bobbing game: “What impressed me most all morning is

the disparateness of Consciousness, not deducible from any

postulate. I am sure the secret of Cosmos lies in it.”
Late in 1903 he decided to bend every effort to the one purpose
of completing his message—not merely writing but making
whatever further investigations and discoveries were necessary to
complete it as fully expounded, to carry out the plan it outlined
[page 258]
and make it self-executing. Not until then should he organize the
movement and perhaps the institution. He changed other plans: he
would not teach a class until then.
In that year of 1903 he wrote that he hoped in the
“Introspective Diary” to give a little sketch of his mental life
during an interval that seemed to be a transition between two
careers. On New Year’s Eve he summarized that year: “A difficult
one in many ways, but better than expected. Several discoveries
stand out as its most important events: basis for taxonomy of the
esthesias and conations, and understanding their meaning; method
for quantitatively measuring subjective conscious states;
measurement of stellar distances; psychurgic principles of business
for institutional work. The article on immortality from new
standpoints attracted notable attention; of many inventions, gem
process and separators most important. Made progress in self-
study of Consciousness and introspective diary; worked on
principle of endoconsciousness. (As stated in a letter to Professor
Parsons on Endophenomena, Consciousness must take place in the
substance of particles and not in the intervening space, or vacuum.)
Spent summer at mountains and seashore with children.” During
the year a bust of Gates was sculptured by Louis Potter.
The diary record of 1904 starts with the observation: “A
student who tries to remember what some authority has said rather
than recall some experience of his own is not on the road to
success—has not the secret of genius. I have always believed that
genius is not so much a superior mental capacity as a superior
method of looking at things. It spends much time in completely
understanding fundamentals and dwells on them for days and days,
while talent learns by heart the statement of some authority in a
few hours.”
Another superior method of development is the introspective
diary, Gates emphasized. “A mentative diary forms the habit of
studying your own mind and simply and directly expressing
spontaneous ideas and insights; and to do this is genius. Reveal
[page 259]
any part of your unconventionalized self, and you reveal humanity
to itself. This reveals in time real motives and powers, keeps the

higher parts of the mind functionally active, and thus develops it.
If you truthfully record every event in your inner and outer life,
you will soon grow ashamed of certain phases of inner events and
your interpretation and use of outer events, and thus the mind will
tend either to stop or modify them. Some way must be devised to
keep the Awareness at its job of governing the mind, and the
mentative diary does it daily. But it takes a few years of faithful
record to make a start.
“Do not fail to record every idea and tendency and event,” he
continued; “you will forget it if you don’t. These ideas, you will
find, are necessary units in a synthesis of thought or action towards
which your mind is progressing. Besides, how will you classify
your mentative data if you don’t record them? There are many
other reasons of still greater importance for the daily record, at the
time it occurs, of every inner and outer event. Only by its study
long afterwards can you judge of your progression or retrogression
along different lines. Science is greatly in need of such studies.
“The record should not be made in the evening when tired, but
always at the time when the charm or despair of the theme is
uppermost. How can you study your mind from memory when
you know after a few years you have forgotten 99 percent of the
ideas and conducts? Never conceal anything from yourself. It will
take a long time to assume that honesty which can impartially
criticize yourself. Only by seeing in each instance what the
Awareness is aware of (and not what you think or feel about it),
can you make a truthful record; and an untruthful one is not worth
making. Perhaps the greatest mistake the novitiate makes is the
persistent illusion that the esthesias, especially wishes, are of our
own volition; they are not, but as much a part of the cosmic order
of events as the rising of the sun. Another similar error is the
venerable lie that it is by the will that choice is made; choice is
involuntary esthesia.
[page 260]
“To look into yourself by the Awareness is the most useful and
amazing power in your life. The Awareness simply witnesses!”
This Daily Mentative Record later became the basis of his
“First Lesson in Psychurgy,” and is the secret of the development
of self-expression.
“I try to mentate on business,” the diary continues, “but my
mind refuses to do so; that is my serious dilemma. I try to like
business and my mind won’t. I try to plan how to handle my
affairs and my mind gives a new supply of ideas on psychologic
and World Work matters. It may be that I am trying to interfere
with some cosmic purpose that has a different end. How I would
like to think so.”

In February the diary notes that he seldom recorded what he

read but that he read every day, especially at mealtimes. Recently
he reread the volumes of the Monist, Whitman, works on physics,
the history of philosophy, and French grammar and lexicon.
In March he sold an option until June on welding inventions.
The deal came as an opportunity he did not seek. Such deals, he
noted, came easily, while those he sought came with difficulty. He
was almost inclined to quit trying so hard and let things go as
events and opportunities let them. In early April, taking a walk
with the children to hunt spring flowers, he was more puzzled than
at any time at Chevy Chase about what course to take in financial
matters. It seemed that he was going toward some total change in
plan regarding the debt and business. In June he was distrait, could
not settle upon any one dominancy. It did not seem right to
sacrifice his assets to a selfish capitalist for a bagatelle when they
should belong to the institution. But by mid-summer his mentative
period related to his whole life’s work: to apply the Mind Art to
the content and purpose of his life, its work, its relation to the
world, its units (people, knowledge, affairs). His view was rapidly
enlarging, with renewed enthusiasm and conviction. The debt no
longer figured so conspicuously in his larger plans, would be
[page 261]
incidental. “I am tired of this struggle,” he wrote in July, “sick of
the constant attempt of those with whom I deal to shirk and cheat.
What a sad chaos of greed and injustice modern ‘business’
represents. Moral and ethical considerations are almost unknown
in transactions, only gain, at any cost to the higher elements of
character.”
If he could only get a dominancy on business! Some aspects of
a dominancy he described as follows in July 1904: “If I ask
something important to come into my mind I begin the asking
process by a certain kind of attention, not necessarily to any
subject except I want a new idea of value to me. But I do more
than hold a state of expectant attention; I am dimly aware that it
must be a discovery, an invention, a business idea, or an impulse
leading me to some deed. I dirigate to the cerebrum
introspectively; it is difficult to define just what I do. But I am
AWARE to the fullest extent of all I know and want. Several
hours or days or weeks of this state are necessary, kept up
intermittently with appropriate rest intervals, and always the mind
produces results I am glad to get. If I keep up this dirigative
introspection long enough I become aware of cerebral fullness,
blood goes to the brain and I become more and more unaware of
my surroundings, absent-minded, and desire to be alone.
Gradually certain subjects come uppermost in mind, and suddenly

a new idea, invention, or impulse takes possession of me. Up to

certain limits, the longer I keep at that subject, the more I become
experimentally acquainted with knowledge on it, the more
discoveries and inventions I make. After a time the mind gets tired
of that subject, wants a rest, and then takes up some other subject.
In developing a subject all methods of accumulating verified
knowledge must be brought to bear: experimental investigation,
the mind’s total knowledge of that subject must be kept classified,
the application so far made of that knowledge must be studied, and
practical specialists conversed and worked with, systematic
ideation carried on, re-functioning of the mental content, and so
on.
“Now the next time my mind does all this, its subject ought
[page 262]
to be my life work as a whole. Or perhaps it will attack the money
problem first.”
But other things also occupied his attention—pleasanter ones.
Back in March he notes Elmer, Jr.’s birthday luncheon on the 28th:
“It is pleasant to see my children enjoy a party of their own. I had
no such experience when young. I hope Elmer, Jr. can give his
children a better time than I have given him.”
The matter of training his children also came in for its share of
consideration. His diary records at that time: “The matter of
systematizing and regulating the domestic discipline of my
children to conform somewhat with well-established pedagogic
and fundamental principles continues to press on my mind. The
urgent self-activity of childhood must be directed and not
repressed, and discipline must be a matter of training and nurture
and not scolding and correction. Every child has its inalienable
rights, and these are some of them. Nothing is more pitiful than to
see a child scolded for a wrong habit—a habit is a stern ruler; the
proper way is to give hourly attention to training until a good habit
is formed.
“I must select a few fundamental principles and insist on their
being applied and consistently carried out. Repressed activity
leads to all kinds of nervous troubles, bad habits, and spoiled
dispositions. The child must be constantly active, physically and
mentally, to be healthy. If plays and works are not devised for
children, they must devise their own, often with barbarian
mischief. Our duty is to direct this activity preferably by play; this
was Froebel’s contribution. Pestalozzi taught us to proceed from
the simple to the complex, from concrete to abstract; and Parker
taught to learn by doing; Baldwin that a child learns by imitation,
and so on. These are well established principles, and it is nothing
less than criminal to cheat a child out of his advantages.

“A child is a cosmic self-activity that develops by learning

habits, by imitating them and doing them; and its direction of
development is that of learning the language, customs, and
[page 263]
knowledge of the world to make a livelihood, a citizen, and a
parent, and to attain happiness and usefulness.
“Spencer has taught what knowledge is most useful and the
order of relative utility. First the child must be taught by training
and nurture self-preservation; must acquire hygienic habits,
preserve its health, be properly fed. Next learn to make a living,
which requires knowledge, morality, and ethics, and so on.
“Imitation is the most powerful factor and training next; and an
education must proceed and be measured by the habits that are
actually formed. It does not suffice to tell a child: ‘Don’t do that’;
it must be trained by repeated and constant practice to do the right
thing until it becomes automatic. A clear understanding of the law
that a child cannot help imitating what it sees, and that the secret of
getting it to do the right thing is not by telling it not to do the
wrong thing but by lovingly making it do the right thing so
frequently it becomes a habit, will solve most ordinary problems of
parental duty and childhood rights. One must not forget that to
keep the child happy is an essential to its health; that it must be
active; that it has a natural and legal right to the guidance and
nurture of its parents, according to the best knowledge of the time.
“A parent must remember that a right habit and disposition
formed in the child will be an ever-present guardian when it goes
out into the world. No greater punishment can come to a parent
than to see an adult child suffer heinous punishment for a crime or
mistake due to defective nurture and training. No greater joy can
come than success traced to early training and example. Give your
child love in the true and right way with good training, and when it
gets older it will return it with compound interest. A parent who
does not strive at any sacrifice to win the loving devotion of the
adult child, misses the best thing in life; and this adult love must be
based on early example, habit, and training. No adult is ever so
severe and correct a critic as a child is of the delinquencies of a
parent.
“Tomorrow is Elmer’s birthday—nine years old. I will give
[page 264]
him two Japanese fairy-tale books to show how an untrue story
may teach a lesson; how a false creed may teach a truth; and
finally, how much better to teach the same truth by true stories. . . .
My children are being raised in the atmosphere of war among the
nations. Elmer has already lived during three!—Cuban,

Philippine, Russo-Japanese. But such is the real world they live

in.”
Early in 1904, Gates was able to formulate a growing insight
into the cumulative evil effects of false knowledge that impressed
him as a significant event. “For long ages of evolution the brain of
man has been growing largely under the shaping influence of lies
and illusions. More and more as he has advanced from the
untheoretical simplicity of anthropoid times towards civilization
his brain and mind have come more and more under the dominion
of false beliefs, superstitions, and non-alethic systems of thought.
He has had his anatomic and psychologic structure shaped into an
abnormality so it is no longer a copy of the macrocosm. Of course
as far as the great groundwork of daily life acts the mind remains
normal, else the species would cease. With the exception of such
acts and facts as of everyday verification and use, the mind has
been almost wholly falsified by the systems of customs and belief;
by false ideas, images, and concepts; false sentiments; by age-long
hypotheses inwrought in the fabric of language, so the mind’s
perceptions and understandings and knowledge and contents no
longer are in congruity and harmony with nature. The mind
largely represents that which is not. For thousands of centuries all
the viewpoints of the mind have been falsified by illusions,
delusions, beliefs, myths, traditions, theories; every conception of
life and death, self, Cosmos, stars and animals, of emotion and
duty has been misshaped by guesses and lies, and under all this the
mind has acquired hereditary habits and the brain has inherited
structures that are abnormal—insane! All kinds of beliefs have
attempted to pervert the normal feelings; every normal emotion has
been thought unholy and all kinds of abnormalities have been
forced upon them. Faith has asked Consciousness to disregard
facts, and thus
[page 265]
man is yoked to a domain of False Knowledge enthroned in his
mind. In some way, which I cannot now describe, this discovery
of the inherited abnormality of mind is the most important thing I
have ever written.
“Lately the world has been awakening to science—the first
world movement—the first religion based on demonstrated
knowledge, and the culminating achievement is that in which the
mind becomes conscious of its own mental method, reduces its
functioning to an art and finds how to rectify its own insanity by an
appeal directly to the experiences of Consciousness.
“If the mind is normalized—sanified—it will no longer want
all that now breeds disease, crime, ignorance and war, no longer
refuse to do what it knows is best; it will transform the world. In

contrast to the ataxic, non-alethic abnormality of the evolved mind

we may place the eutaxic, alethic normality of psychologically
classified, conscioused knowledge. The tearing down of the
inherited insanity of the ages and the building in the mind of the
demonstrated sanity of psychotaxic science—that is the world-
work of the coming cycle.
“It is appalling to contemplate that 95 percent of the mental
content for ages and ages has been utterly false.
“How is it possible that in this Cosmos with its eternal
experience there can be such horrors of crime and injustice as we
daily witness? How is it that people are ignorant and brutal, that
they will not do as well as they know they ought, what they know
and believe to be best? Why is there war and oppression?
Something is wrong in the Universe. I have told what is wrong:
man’s mind has been deceived and misled by ages of systematized
falsehood and abnormal custom; it is diseased and insane. Its
salvation lies in sanity.
“What is sane? That which is true! How find it? Through
Consciousness—it knows some things absolutely true from which
as a criterion it tests truth. Consciousness is sane. The mind has
been mis-built by theory.”
At the same time he developed this companion insight: “When
playing a musical chord one may focus the attention on
[page 266]
[any] one of the notes until it is heard distinctly above all the
others. In looking at a landscape one may limit the attention to a
certain color until it becomes unduly accentuated. The same
principle applies to an estimate of a person’s character, to a subject
of reading, to any mental process. Therefore it is necessary to
apply the method of systematic mentation according to a synoptic
list of all mental processes relating thereto, and also from each
branch of knowledge, that each characteristic of the object or
subject may be accentuated in turn and each mental process made
dominant, and then all united in one equalized view by re-
functioning and introspective dominancy, which is a unitary or
totality view. It is impossible to over-accentuate the importance of
this practice of the Mind-art. Only by having each characteristic
alternately dominant can they be made sufficiently vivid to enable
the introspector to get them all in the same light when
‘photographing’ them for a totality view; only by applying each
mental function in turn can the mind handle the subject as a
mentative whole.
“The greatest danger encountered by the mind next to insanity,
false information (‘pseudognosis’), and ignorance, is a one-sided
view of a subject.

“The whole revelation of science must be assiduously sought

along each and every line so that when conditions change in
ourselves or environment they may be met. Only with the totality
of discoverable knowledge can the weal of man be safely
entrusted.”
In August 1904, Gates noted: “Just 16 weeks till the mortgage
is due. If not paid I will lose all these properties and most of my
inventions, with a judgement hanging over me unless I go into
bankruptcy, which though my legal counsel and friends urge, I will
not do. Yet my inventive assets, if developed, would easily be
worth 100 times the debt. Do I want to pay $200,000 for them?
Yes, as a matter of honor but no other reason. Will I be able to pay
the big debt? If not, make up my mind to make the best of it.
“I am not up to par; agraphia makes it difficult to write,
[page 267]
producing numbness and cramps in fingers, headache, nausea,
slight dizziness of eyesight, and when I use the typewriter or too
much longhand my heartbeat is increased to 100 or 128. All of
which means I must rest as soon as I can. Long worry of the most
acute kind, overwork at persistent thinking, have combined to
render an almost impregnable constitution sufficiently weakened to
make a breakdown liable if not careful.
“No money coming in or in sight. Various agents not heard
from or have failed. Have a pay order to write an article on ‘What
Is Matter?’ for a syndicate of Sunday magazines. I am at the
darkest hours financially,” the dreary record continues. “Is it the
darkness before dawn?
“I feel better. Pearlie helps me most at my real work.”
Pearlie—Alma Pearl Edson, his sister-in-law—came to live
with the family as a girl of fifteen. She soon found a place
transcribing recorded dictation, typing manuscript, especially the
“Introspective Diary,” and helping with housework. As part of her
training she was made governess, or mentor, to one of the children,
Donald. Later she became secretary, financial assistant, and
psychurgic student; she remained unmarried and devoted her life to
the psychurgic work with “an outstanding devotion and uncommon
loyalty,” sharing the family vicissitudes and rewards.
In September, Professor Albert van der Naillen, president of
The School of Engineering of San Francisco, came to consider the
advisability of presenting some of Elmer Gates’ matters in Europe,
where he was going. He visited at Chevy Chase for a few days. “A
fine, noble man,” the diary records. “I wonder what will come of
it?” Van der Naillen had written to Gates: “I have never met a man
during the half century of my scientific studies and researches who
has accumulated in one person such an array of scientific

knowledge, such unbounded high, scientific intuition, as you are

endowed with-and you know I am acquainted and in
correspondence with the most scientific men of prominence in
Europe.”
In October, Gates wrote a “Supplement IX: Business
[page 268]
Arrangements for the Special Preparatory Work,” which pointed
out that his main work had been disguised as inventions under the
mask of business. “The epoch-making science of Consciousness
has been kept in the background of a picture across the face of
which has been posted an advertisement saying money from
inventions.” Consequently he feared that he had not met those
philanthropic people of means who would be interested in his real
work, but only “selfish promoters, traders, and thieves seeking
opportunity to make millions.”
This preparatory work was to take three years for the exhibits
in publication, laboratory, and organization to be ready before
solicitation of funds for the work. He wanted the money to start
the science department, not to develop inventions. Any deal would
chain him to inventive exploitation for six or more years, and he
could not spare the time. Perhaps he should seek a donation. He
had never seriously considered it, but always thought he had to
make the discoveries and give his life to the work, making his
living independently, and by inventions support his researches and
endow the work.
In spite of erroneous press reports of large donations, he wrote
in 1903 that of the $500,000 expended during the preceding
decade, only $14,000 was donated; and that was the total amount
during his lifetime. (The contribution from Mrs. Hearst had been
largely repaid, mainly because her son demanded an interest in the
inventions.) He spent several weeks in New York meeting wealthy
people. Friends at various times brought his work to the attention
of the leading philanthropists of the day. But as he pointed out
later, without his demonstrative exhibit his work could never be
adequately presented so as to be understood in the limited time
given to its consideration, and it did not fit established patterns of
philanthropy. He deeply regretted that people did not see the
opportunity of psychurgy. As he said, “I must make money. No
one will donate several hundred millions to this work, unless I do;
and I cannot unless I make it first.”
The sixteen-week mortgage deadline soon came. It was deals,
[page 269]
options, near deals; some money, no money; judgments and threats
of lawsuits; last-minute delays and un-kept promises and contract

failures; disappointments, worry, and illness; no solution for the

big debt. By November 1904, the Chevy Chase properties,
laboratories, residence, equipments, and listed inventions (152,
including 87 U.S. and 34 foreign patents) belonged to Mayer.
From then on rent was paid, and interest to maintain the option to
free the inventions upon repayment of $100,000.
Near the close of the year, through parties introduced by his
friend Nicholas, a deal was arranged with a Canadian steel and iron
company based on Gates’ method of separating titaniferous
particles from Canadian magnetite. The method was approved by
experts, and $250,000 was to have been paid January 30 if the
promised option on the selected sand deposits could be obtained.
But at the last moment the man who had promised to deliver failed
because he had only an option on an option whose owner was in
Europe at the time. So the deal was postponed, leaving Gates only
one day to handle the Chevy Chase situation for the coming year
1905. He met Mayer and Mayer’s lawyer, and accomplished what
he wanted: a year more, lower interest, and an option for outright
purchase of all interests of his debt. He then had five months to
pay the 4 percent interest for the year, and could sell any invention
in the list and apply three-fourths of the net profit toward the debt.
“Ends better than planned,” he noted. “Still here and likely to be
as long as I like.” Then he added: “Only by becoming rapt with
the persistent awareness of the immediate presence of The All can
one become holy, good, above wrong doing, beyond immorality,
consecrated. Such a life I want to lead.”
But by March his diary recorded: “The depression due to my
inability to get out of debt after such a long struggle, to my want of
money for living, to threatened lawsuits, to the ‘talk’ that is going
the rounds about my financial troubles, the almost hopeless
situation in which I do not see how to get money, the delays in the
deal which promised a quarter of a million dollars; and other
worries about which I do not talk; the struggle I have
[page 270]
before me to regain what I lost through unauthorized newspaper
articles—and this and more hangs so darkly over me that it
destroys my appetite and gives nausea. I am almost ill. I am
nearer to discouragement than ever before. Reading the way in
which Bruno and Galileo were persecuted for telling the truth
almost makes me lose confidence in the beneficent ordering of
events. I wonder if I ought to rely on a power outside myself.
Would such a power allow Bruno to be burned to death for
teaching truth? Alas, these are hard questions. Perhaps it was
better for that time and place for the church to be unmolested, as a
general might keep the truth from soldiers to encourage them.

“Today I am at the lowest ebb of my hopes and confidence. I

am not discouraged yet. I am not ‘blue’ but weighted down with
my burden more than ever before. I have a poorer opinion of
myself; I want to lean on someone else as never before. I want to
get at my real work as never before. I am saner about my work,
able to do better work, my plans are nearer right. Then why should
I be depressed? I would rather have gotten my recent discoveries
about pseudognosis, purpose, judgment-training, and volition than
millions of dollars. I would now deliberately and rejoicingly
prefer to make several more such discoveries—my whole nature
would compel me to this choice. Therefore I know my place in the
scheme of things; nature has given me the likings and abilities
according to what I ought to do. I have made more progress today
than in many months. I am doing what I ought to do, and am
succeeding. I do not want charge of a great business enterprise,
but simply to be free from debt, live simply, complete my message,
experiment and invent a little, make an exhibit of my work for
purposes still mainly to be determined. That last phrase is the
point, mark it!
“I think I will leave Chevy Chase and start elsewhere. I am
more than through here.”
In June 1905, Gates contracted with a successful promoter and
manager of business enterprises to organize the Electric Separator
and Alloy Company, preferred stock to be given to Mayer and
other creditors to liquidate the debt. After much
[page 271]
delay, Mayer finally assigned his interests to the company. But
Gates was not pleased with the attempt to get control of all
inventions by the promoter, who also refused to organize the
company unless all the other creditors ( 141 of them!) first agreed
to accept stock in payment; and only after great effort did over 90
percent sign agreements. By the end of October, however, the
promoter had not fulfilled his obligations, and upon the advice of
Searles and legal counsel, was asked to surrender his contract. A
few months later, according to New York newspapers, the
promoter became involved in lawsuits resulting from questionable
practices. He was well rid of. It was in his office, though, that in
September, Gates had met John E. Searles, who had organized
large enterprises. Searles became interested, visited Chevy Chase
with his experts, and undertook to handle the situation. Through
Senator Towne, Gates met Morton Frewen of England, who
became a friend and also tried to help.
“My main creditor,” the diary records in November, “has not at
any time made an effort to help sell or promote the inventions in
which interested but has many times obstructed such deals. I have

one more month here unless I pay rent, janitor, keep the place in
repair, and so forth, which I cannot do without help. This struggle
is too long and hard; it is no longer fair and just to me or my family
or my lifework.”
Mayer wrote to Searles offering to give Gates a few weeks
option on the Chevy Chase properties, and offered to rent them for
$250 a month until May; but in February he gave notice to vacate
or pay $500 a month.
In the meantime Gates had decided that the business problem
was to find an invention that could be sold, and get it ready. A
recent invention not in the mortgaged list was his continuous
counterflow sand-flow filter, a dirt and germ filter for water. The
method had been worked out in some detail; for example, the best
“sand” was found to be crushed and graded porcelain or hard-
baked clays, a refinement of the art. In March a half interest was
sold for $6,900, and the laboratories were rented for one year until
March 1907. Unfortunately the manufacturer
[page 272]
who bought the filter rights did not commercialize them because of
lack of capital.
In April 1906, the diary noted that the perniciously misquoted
“rat experiment” was going the rounds of the papers. (Gates found
that a living organism, opaque to short electric waves, became
transparent to them when dead. But the press twisted the facts to
read: “The soul was seen just as the dying animal became
transparent. The soul, which had made it opaque, was seen to
ascend.”) More important: “Almost to the degree of protest there
arises in me a feeling and belief that by some new kind of effort I
might attain some great achievement of a revolutionary nature to
human weal. There is some-thing in me slumbering, waiting the
time I shall one day suddenly find the place where my powers will
be tried and used to my utmost.”
Other events of recorded interest: “May 6, 1906, 47 years old.
I have not done as well as I might if I could do it over again. I
would take better care of my health, and for social and business
policies take a full set of academic degrees, learn and practice
business methods from the beginning; strive to a higher moral and
ethical ideal; publish as fast as I discover; keep out of debt. But
degrees and attention to business might have thwarted my
originality. I would have missed that larger and more practical
training in my own laboratory and sidetracked my original
tendencies. I see that I would have missed alethics and cognosis.
“September 28: Have finished the most difficult 100 pages ever
written: the chapter on Psychotaxic Symbols, Marks, Diagrams and

Signs. Been three months at it. It will live. Day after tomorrow
expect to go to New York to make money.
“Whenever I think of a business deal I grow sad, nervous, with
cold hands,” he wrote. Nevertheless, the money from the filter
deal almost spent, in December he sold a two-thirds interest in
cold- and-heat-conserving inventions for $10,600. “A great
Christmas for the children; many presents!”
On the eve of 1907, he wrote that the last year he had
wondered “when” and “what”; and so he wondered then.
[page 273]
During the past year he had achieved several months’ writing,
“made about $20,000, had a pretty good time. Last night,” he
wrote of New Year’s Eve, “the bells tolled and whistles blew in
Washington and their roar at this distance was like the rumble of a
great orchestra. In Chevy Chase the bugles blew and cowbells
jingled. A New Year. What has it in store for me that I cannot
avoid and what I can determine by my own effort? Will I get parts
3, 4, and 5 of the book finished? O not to get tied up with
business! I expect success. I will do as well as I can.
“What all men need now and every day is more life and
liveliness and eagerness and earnestness and surplus energy. They
do not care enough to make great effort for anything. Nothing
interests them excessively, they are not full to overflowing with
spirits, a desire to be doing, of putting forth great effort for the joy
of it. The genius values something enough to try hard for it, others
never try hard. There is no divine urge. How give it to them? By
surplus energy training, emotive training, dirigating the incentive
by anabolic motives.”
What indeed had the new year 1907 in store that could not be
avoided? In March, Mayer died at age sixty-one after a brief
illness. Gates described the situation in a letter of October 1908, to
a friend as follows: “Before Mayer died he deeded the Chevy
Chase properties and inventions to George Washington University,
if I did not fulfill my option by April 15, to be sold and proceeds
used to erect a memorial building; provided in a reasonable time
the university bought a certain million dollar tract of land for a new
location. This reasonable time has now expired and the University
has been eliminated. Before Mayer died he borrowed money on
these properties from a local Trust Company, then left them to his
heirs subject to this debt and option.”
The option was not fulfilled; Gates paid rent to and secured
extensions from first the university, then the trust company. The
heirs contested the will, and it was in the courts for eight years,
with title to the properties indeterminate. In 1916 a news item

announced: “$550,000 Mayer Will Case Compromised.”

Agreement
[page 274]
was reached by the three main heirs, with about $80,000 going to
charities.
By August 1907, most of the $10,000 from the refrigerator deal
had been used trying to make a big deal. Associates failed to raise
money in various places and deals. Six months’ rent in advance,
due in August, was not paid, and the lease and option were lost.
“Best week’s work in psychurgy,” was also noted in the diary .
“Working at askeotechnical symbols as if not worried about
money. On December 17 invented method of making soap from
bacteria and fungi. For two years I have been writing my chapter
on Cognostics; it has required making over 1100 experiments and
writing many thousand equations and formulas.”
On January 1, 1908, Gates supposed, with unconscious
foreboding, that the year would let him out of his financial
difficulties. The past year was significant, he noted, because of
what he learned of radioactivity and its application to physics,
chemistry, and astronomy; of pragmatism and his own step in the
philosophy of Being and the discovery of two modes of energy;
advances in askeotechnics; the bliss of Awareness; identification of
esthesias as the basis of world culture, with knowledge as means.
It was also a year of struggle against increasing odds.
Six months’ rent was paid early in 1908 with money raised on
a possible gold and glass deal. Money to renew the lease in
August was sought from various sources. Reports of the situation
were circ-lated in vain. Searles was in London on a deal. On
October 20 he cabled: “Final meeting the 26th, expect to get
money.” On the twenty-fourth he dropped dead!
Further money was thus not available for the second term’s
rent; an extension in October was not met. On December 27,
1908, Gates noted that during the past two months several notices
to vacate had been received from the trust company; he thought an
extension had been granted to January 1, but the next day was
asked to vacate on a day’s notice. His wife Phebe and Pearlie
found a place in Washington, and under hardships
[page 275]
of bad weather and lack of cash, moved in. For a week the family
split and stayed with friends.
Chevy Chase was history.
Many friends had been concerned at the possible loss of the
laboratories. Former Governor Hoyt had written: “I am moved to
express my earnest sympathy with the noble and philanthropic

spirit in which he plans and works. I would consider his loss of the
laboratories, so skillfully originated and so carefully built up at a
sacrifice of much else, a public misfortune.”
An interested press had also given notice. One public view of
Gates’ apparently hopeless situation was reflected that critical year
of 1908 in this item in the newspaper World Events:
An Interesting Personality
Elmer Gates, “The puzzling philosopher of Chevy Chase,”

is a great and retiring man in his profession. What is that
profession? . . .
He built laboratories and employed able assistants to help
in paths in which he was to become an independent
investigator. His funds grew low but he found those who
helped him to build the series of laboratories out from
Washington, which have become a familiar haunt of scientists
in the Government, and in which Gates has thought and
wrought with a great subtlety, and enunciated propositions
most remarkably novel and fascinating. “Absurd and fabulous
stories,” says a correspondent, “have been connected with his
name.” “Gates says,” ran headlines, “that sin is pink. Every
thought has a color; the well-equipped mind is a spectrum.”
“What I have seen of him in the newspapers,” says Prof. James
of Harvard, “has disgusted me, yet to me he is a most
interesting personality.”
Gates is declared to be primarily a psychologist. He is a
student of the mind—its method of acquiring and using
knowledge, its modes of work, and its possibilities. He affirms
[page 276]
that the proper routine of education is first to learn how to use
the mind according to its own laws, and then use it that way in
acquiring the other sciences. He occasionally is in the legal
news in patent suits. He has a long list of patented inventions.
“A half million dollars in debt, with all these patents tied up as
security, unable to market one till he clears them all, Gates still
labors on hoping to save these fruits as endowments for his
ultimate college”—an institution which he has dreamed of
forming in the interests of his methods.
According to the obituary in a local newspaper, Mayer was

born and educated in Geneva, Switzerland, and gained business
experience in banking and commercial firms in Germany as

correspondent and bookkeeper. Coming to this country with only

twelve dollars in gold, he worked seven years as a grocery clerk,
suffering a break-down. After recuperating in Europe, he entered
the employ of a large wholesale flour and feed company in
Washington and progressed to senior member of the firm. “He
took a leading part in philanthropic effort and was regarded as a
most loyal and lovable companion of happy disposition. . . .These
bequests of his, said a friend, illustrate that he lived up to his creed,
which is expressed in the immortal words of Ben Adhem: ‘Write
me as one who loves my fellow man.’ ” So the account ran. Mayer
had given the local organization of the cult to which he be-longed a
modern building for society headquarters, and its newspaper
printed pages of effusive eulogy.
Mayer’s long business training evidently had given him a high
respect for property ownership, and he was a concerned landlord.
Six months after acquiring the Chevy Chase properties, he wrote a
letter to Gates: “I went by the property the other day. One of the
lawns is in terrible condition, full of garlic and other weeds, and
looks exceedingly neglected. It should be attended to at once. . . .
Kindly give this matter your immediate attention because a stitch
in time saves nine. Also kindly let me hear from you at once
regarding this matter and oblige.”
{12 unnumbered pages of photographs}
[page 277]
In April 1906, he wrote: “To Friend Gates: I hope you will get
a first class man to take care of the hedges and lawns. Your last
man made a miserable job. . . . The Insurance Company requested
a week ago two more watchman’s registering points. This must be
done and I trust you have already attended to it, or do so at once.”
As a result of that dramatic chance meeting in 1894 through
Captain Edson, Mayer first subsidized Gates to write his early
volumes, and in 1899 took over the Leggett obligations from a
philanthropic interest in the psychurgic work. To a friend, Gates
wrote that his World Work attempts had succeeded twelve out of
fourteen times, and that the Chevy Chase-Mayer affair was one of
the failures. “Mayer did not in the least understand the principles
of psychurgy, and suddenly acquired an obstinate determination to
force me to make the laboratories the headquarters of the cult in
which he believed, which as the laboratories were a scientific
institution, was refused and his interest thereby lost.” Mayer was a
means, however unwittingly, in aiding those great developments in
psychurgy and in the art and science of Consciousness made by
Gates at his historic Chevy Chase laboratories during those
memorable twelve years of financial struggle and disappointment

and of glorious discoveries and accomplishments; common objects

and events indeed had shaped a career even greater than planned!
During that last year at Chevy Chase, Gates recorded a slim
diary. Of the few entries, two were noteworthy: in April,
completion of his first systematic sketch of the science and art of
consciousing (cognosis); and in July, completion of the typewriting
of Volume 1, “The General Preface to the Twelve Volumes” by
Pearlie.
For 1909 there were even fewer entries-only nine pages in this
the last year of the “Introspective Diary” as such; thereafter records
of importance were edited, classified, and incorporated with their
respective subjects, as was Gates’ usual practice. On October 15
appears its last entry: “I await events, not knowing
[page 278]
quite what other course to take than the one at which my mind
seems irrevocably engaged-that of writing the Twelve Volumes. I
am tired of this long struggle for financial competency.
“Great Persons (people of genius) are the world’s most
precious asset; the race has oppressed them rather than utilized
them. To utilize them, to aid in giving their fuller and truer
experiences to themselves and thus bring the race under the
dominancy of verified knowledge is the desideratum; but the race
is so under the domination of ignorance, speculation, priestcraft,
and belief that the aim is difficult to realize.
“I want, O I want to put my time to my work. How? When?
“I am doing it anyhow!”
So ends this extraordinary diary, its 2,700 pages a study of
much psychologic interest and of poignant personal experience.
Of this “Introspective Diary” in general Gates said, about 1900:
“This study is seriously and precisely truthful. Its value consists in
its truthfulness as a record of an actual experience. These
impulses and insights actually came into my mind as stated—they
are syntheses of my practical adaptations and actions with
reference to important plans. . . . This record is a natural product, a
psychologic phenomenon, which may be studied.” And this
experience opened many new domains, perhaps none more fitting
to carry him through those eventful years, with that buoyant
optimism that was in stark contrast to the dreary struggles, than his
discovery of the bliss of conscious existence recorded in this note
of July 9, 1900:
“During the day of my severest business worry I conceived an
article on the joy of Conscious Existence. Even in pain and
anguish it is better to be consciously existent than not to be. We
are so accustomed to being alive that we do not duly notice it or
properly value it; and yet I introspectively noticed that the joy of

being conscious (no matter what—pleasure or pain) is the chief

joy. The pleasure of being alive is as much as I can bear when I
choose to introspect it. It is a perpetual anabolism. Nothing has
ever more profoundly amazed me than this introspective discovery
that my very existence is blissful, just now,
[page 279]
just as I am. Any struggle is better than not to be. O the bliss of
life—just life alone, even in its darkest hours. Never again can
there come to me an hour so dreary as some through which I have
passed. Those hours, though I knew it not, were filled with the joy
of consciousness, with the bliss of being aware. So intermittent
has been this joy of being that I have not noticed it. O the privilege
of doing. Doing what? Anything! A new domain of feeling has
opened to me.”
In his new home at the start of the new year 1909 he faced the
same problem of living, but with lower expenses. The old year
had been a hard one, ending with the loss of his beloved
laboratories, but beginning a new phase of his career. On that
heartbreaking eve of the new year Gates most certainly faced the
future with the same optimistic hope so well expressed, at the end
of his relatively good year 1906, in this New Year’s greeting
written for a Washington newspaper:
“To the old year that has just ended and to all those cycles of
years which we call the Past, let us pay tribute of a loving
remembrance and a reverent respect. Out of that beginningless
bygone time comes that splendid Present in which we are now
living and in which are taking place many of the fulfillments of the
foregoing eternities. Not as a dead thing resurrected out of a tomb
does the Present arise out of the Past, but as a child born out of its
mother, inheriting her nature and tendencies. The Past is not and
the Future is not—the Present only is, an endless succession of
Nows, and the Now of today is the Mother of tomorrow, and You
and I, by actions that start lines of consequences which in turn
become causes, are helping to shape the Future. Today is the Past
of tomorrow, and those deeds and feelings of ours which produce
effects today, in ourselves and others or in the physical
environment, are shaping tomorrow’s Past, and our acts thereby
become causes cooperating with the Cosmic Process in producing
the Future. Like Gods are our powers and God-like we should
creatively use them.
“To the New Year with its dangers and opportunities, its joys
and sorrows, its births and deaths, its allurements and duties,

[page 280]
its yet undiscovered wonders of Science and Art and its unrevealed
events—let us give a hearty greeting of Welcome and make a
prayer for the success of all noble effort. How eagerly we will
await the rising of the daily curtain upon the ceaseless drama of
events! What clues will we get of the Cosmic Trend and of the
Eternal Purposes? What revealments of knowledge, feeling and
doing, O New Year, hast thou in store for each of us? What hints
will the Eternal Mystery give us of its meanings?”

[page 281]
CHAPTER 14
The Chevy Chase Record
I have been striving for another kind of success-to make

discoveries and know reality. —ELMER GATES
Were the Chevy Chase laboratories worth the great struggle

and effort?
Psychurgy was tested by practical laboratory work in the
fourteen years at Germantown and Chevy Chase. Ordinarily it is
understood that “original investigation” is carried on for
discovering something new and that more data (facts, laws,
principles) will thereby be added to science and more technique to
art; that these data are then taken by the “original” thinkers and
systematized and generalized and interpreted, and that the creative
“imagination” recombines them and erects a new superstructure.
But it required much psychologic knowledge and much laboratory
and subjective experimentation for Gates to unravel these
processes and find out what they meant; to analyze them into their
states and processes of states and then learn how to do them
scientifically and according to rational and consciously known and
intended principles.
In his “Synopsis of the Past Ten Years’ Work,” circulated in
1904 among those interested, he reported that much time had been
devoted to determining the taxonomic kinds and classes of
[page 282]
mental data and the particular mental technique most applicable to
each of the arts and sciences, and producing the greatest number of
new and true ideas. The practicality of the methods was
determined by the number of discoveries and inventions. His
associates often assured him that he could think out more new and
true ideas about a subject in a shorter time than anyone about
whom they had ever heard—not random ideas, but ideas that
formed a system of knowledge data upon a subject, the most
difficult kind of thinking.
In the order of progress the mind first discovers a new idea,
then proceeds inventively to apply it. This application is not easy,
requiring an order of mind almost as advanced as to discover the
idea; therefore, inventive experiment goes hand in hand with
scientific research. Only through the application of knowledge to
human use does man materially profit by science; and this nearly
always involves invention as well as business handling and
commercial perfection. Accordingly in Gates’ laboratories a series

of costly studies was made of methods by which the mind naturally

carries a new idea through these successive stages.
It was at Chevy Chase that the arts of discovering and
inventing were reduced to a systematically formulated and
scientifically validated technique, and thoroughly tested by
practicing them. Some of the special lines of scientific research
thus opened up or extended were listed in his Synopsis as follows:
A psychological study of discoverers and of the mental
activities or processes of making discoveries, including all kinds of
originative and creative work, with special reference to genius and
methods of scientific investigation—chiefly by making discoveries
under experimentally varied conditions of body, mind, and
environment.
A psychological study of inventors and the mental processes of
inventing, including all kinds of designing and constructing, with
special reference to talent and methods of inventional
experimentation—chiefly by inventing under experimentally
varied conditions.
A psychological study under experimentally varied conditions
[page 283]
of students and the mental process of learning, including all kinds
of prodigies; of teachers and the mental process of teaching,
including all kinds of lecturing, explaining, conversing,
expounding, and such with special reference to science—chiefly
by teaching and expounding orally or in writing; of moral, ethical,
and religious persons and their mental conditions and processes, to
discover the conditions of normality and the training for it; of
scientists and the sciences and the mental states or taxonomic
integrants constituting knowledge, their classification or
psychotaxis, their two stages of verification, and the sciences as
subdivisions of psychology; of artisans, artists, professional
persons, skilled workmen, and the arts, and the mental processes
involved in learning and practicing the arts, and the arts as
subdivisions of the one art of psychurgy; of merchants, buyers, and
sellers and the mental processes, individual and sociologic, of
industry and commerce.
A psychologic study of philosophers and the mental processes
of philosophy.
A systematic study of individual psychology and experimental
introspection.
An experimental study of comparative psychology; of mind-
embodiment and brain-building; of sociology, group mentation,
sociurgy; of subconscious functionings, mental spontaneities,
improvisations; of volition and conation, auturgy, teleotaxis; of
intellective, esthesic, and conative mentation; of effects of

conditions on mentative dominancies; of functional periodicities

and prognosis; of heredity and eugenics; of physiologic rest and
psychologic quiescence and social harmony.
A psychologic study of some just-dawning mental powers, and
of ordinary powers extended by special training; of suggestibility
and hypnotism.
Systematic application of psychurgy to making discoveries in
the six groups of sciences and to making them synthetically: a
synthetic science-psychology. Psychurgy applied to itself: a
synthetic art-psychurgy.
Also listed in the 1904 Synopsis were these thirty-five selected
[page 284]
lines of inventive research in which results had been attained:
Acoustics and music: an electromagnetic method of producing
fundamental tones without their harmonics, and by which the
number and harmonic relation of overtones can be regulated in a
note, so that tonal qualities can be made sad or gay; musical
instruments and acoustical apparatus; acoustically regulated
automatic devices; synthetic music, counterpoint of overtones;
methods of training.
Aerodynamics: device for dynamometrically measuring
effectiveness of aerial propellers; an aerial propeller; a method of
aerial propulsion.
Alloys: method of making and testing.
Architecture: construction of sanitary and sanatory houses,
building materials, segmental houses.
Chemistry: monochromatic chemistry, cellular synthetic
chemistry; qualitative analysis.
Electricity: measuring instruments; sunshine into electricity;
gas storage battery; Foucault-current telephone dynamo; electric
typewriter; vacuum enclosed dynamo, motor, and static machine.
Fire protective devices: fire extinguisher, a new method (the
basic fire-foam patent)
Food improvement: selective propagation and cell stimulation
and method of analyzing minute qualities to augment any desirable
constituent and eliminate undesirable ones; radiothermic cooking.
Gems: artificially making all oxide gems; enameling;
fluoroscopic separation of gems from gravels.
Grinding, pulverizing: cryothermic method.
Higher temperatures: a method of obtaining; non-
contaminative heating, metal working and shaping.
Invisible optics.
Lighting: hygienic illumination by shielding from eyes,
screening out invisible rays.
Linguistics: word groups for special trades, professions.

Looms and mining: (as previously noted).
[page 285]
Metallurgy: reduction of titaniferous ores; higher temperatures
applied to reduction; agglomerating ores.
Meteorology, electric: experiments and devices showing
relation of electricity to weather.
Microscopy and telescopy: the double microscope; reflection
microscope; cumulative photomicrography; invisible-ray
photomicrography; oxygen lens.
Non-electrolytic device: plumbing, vessels and pipes.
Painting and pictorial representation: comparative visibility of
pigments in relation to distance and color perspective;
augmentation of luminosity by reflected colors.
Pedagogics: improved and new educative apparatus;
psychurgic instruments; psychotaxic museum groups; educative
toys; prismatic photometer; electric sonometer; reflection color
wheel.
Photography: sensitive plates in relation to temperature of
greatest sensitivity; photographic values of pigments under
different reflected visible and invisible colors.
Physical training: psychophysically regulated training devices;
sports and games for special and general training; mechano-
therapy.
Publication: devices for printing any number of copies
simultaneously; terromagnetic transmission of news.
Radiothermics: focalization of solar and other rays and their
applications to non-contaminative fusions, recrystallizations in
vacuo, and enameling.
Refrigeration: thermostatic regulation of rate; automatic
cooling of air in houses, regulation of moisture; non-conductive
vacuum plates.
Submarine: devices for industrial operations and exploration.
Toys: dumbbell wrestlers, bow-gun top; bat and return ball;
cryophorus toy; kaleidoscope marble; cushion hobbyhorse; top and
stick; paper and spool shoot-the-chute; parallel-line illusion on
transparent paper.
Various devices: linear-lens ruler; suction sweeper;
[page 286]
anatomical transparencies; clay furniture; electrosonic drilling and
graving; airjet motor; Axminster static machine; method of
delinting cottonseed; bathing bag for army or camp; suction bath
sponge; hollow-wick candle; draw-cut scissors; vacuum clock;
water lens; collapsible and hollow-handle toothpaste brush;
multum in parvo computer; hourglass self-closing ink bottle.

War: armor plate, of greater resistance, that will float; rapid-

fire gun; others.
X-Rays: electromagnetic augmentation; plateholder.
At Chevy Chase, Gates applied his improved art of discovery
to opening up a number of new and fruitful lines of research in
several sciences and arts by discovering for each a new
experimental method and technique, showing by results that it was
worthy of further pursuit and that practical applications could be
expected to pay the costs. He called these methods, when
collected and systematized, a department of Research. A few of
the twenty-six proposed departments of Research were briefly
described in his “Confidential Report of 1909.”
One of the most appealing was a department relating to the
Diagnosis and Cure of Disease. During a mentative period of
seven months Gates discovered “psychophysical diagnosis”: when
any one of the psychophysical measurements of a person is found
to fall away from his previously established standards, it indicates
the approach of some disease, long before the patient feels the first
symptoms, or other modes of diagnosis can detect it. Then is the
opportune time to begin treatment. This method can also be used
by the psychurgic teacher to follow the gain or loss of some mental
capacity under training. Measurements were made in the isolation
chamber under uniform and standard conditions, some sixty-eight
or less being made under selected conditions. He discovered
“photometrical diagnosis”: when different wave lengths of visible
and invisible light are thrown upon an animal body, some find
certain tissues transparent and others opaque; the relative degrees
of transparency of each tissue to each group of wave lengths may
be measured, and when any varies from its standard it indicates
disease.
[page 287]
He discovered “phototherapy”: although a given tissue is
transparent to certain groups of wave lengths, pathological germs
in these tissues are not similarly or equally so and are opaque to
some. When the wave length to which the germ is opaque, but to
which the surrounding tissue is transparent, is augmented in
intensity and especially made rapidly intermittent, it quickly
destroys the germ, which absorbs the rays and is heated and photo
chemically acted upon and killed. (In connection with other lines
of research, special light sources and optical equipment were
invented and used.)
At another mentative period Gates worked out a method of
artificial phagocytotherapy by which the phagocytes of an animal
that is naturally immune to a given pathogenic germ are taken, (or
even artificially bred) and injected into the veins of the patient in

much larger quantities than naturally supplied. When Gates first

wrote and talked about this experimentation, nothing had been
done in this line; but since then, he noted in 1913, two of those to
whom he talked had written about it. But the right kind of research
remained to be done.
He also discovered ganglionic therapy by
electrocataphoretically carrying into the ganglionic center of an
organ or system a very small quantity of medicine, instead of
administering it in the usual larger doses. He carried much further
the application of his earlier methods of dirigation for the cure of
certain diseases, and the methods of brain-building to cure others,
as in the development of imperfect organs. When systematic
sensory and motor excitation of any bodily part was accompanied
by an intentional discrimination of the least-noticeable-difference
between all degrees of sensory and motor feelings, the augmented
enregistration (brain-building) in the connected brain area
produced a greater development in that part of the body.
One interesting case (reported in the New York Medical Times,
December 1897, in the article by Gates cited later) was of a patient,
68, whose left arm had not grown in size since he was 14 months
old, owing to sequelae of scarlet fever, during
[page 288]
which time he had not moved any portion of his arm. A few
months of this psychophysical training in discriminating touch,
pressure, distance between touches, temperature, and muscular
feeling (using a platinum probe for electrical stimulation) caused
the arm to grow to three times its former size, and the patient was
able to move each finger and bend the arm at the elbow. After his
death a few years later, examination of his brain showed in the
right-cortex arm areas an enormous number of young and well-
formed cells.
Two interesting examples of brain-building were also given.
Mrs. M had been suffering for nine years from dyspepsia, not so
much from gastric inability as from improper assimilation. Gates
gave her a systematic series of training in pleasurable odors and
perfumes and tastes, and in remembrances of pleasurable gustatory
and other hunger feelings at the same hour daily for two months.
The result was complete restoration of her assimilative powers and
a gain of 20 percent in weight (she was much emaciated) and of
more than 30 percent in strength. The additional brain-cells, he
considered, that were thus placed in the cerebral areas of the
gastrointestinal tract (or the development of incipient cells) caused
the brain to send more and better stimuli to the digestive organs.
Mr. L was unable to distinguish as small a color difference
with the left eye as with the right. By producing upon the eyeball

and its supplementary integuments a series of systematic sense-

impressions of the different kinds, and of many thousand tints,
shades, and hues of color, there was produced in seven weeks a
greater power of discrimination in the left eye.
Another application was the cure of criminal and immoral
dispositions by systematically remaking the moral nature
anatomically, physiologically, and psychologically. He found at
least as many moral diseases as physical ones. Another application
was curing diseases of the intellect, including many kinds of
mental aberration, of which monomanias and nervous prostration
are types. Gates found that when through worry or overwork any
one set of structures in the brain becomes permanently hyperemic
[page 289]
so that the mind cannot stop working, by putting new sensory and
“imagive” and ideative structures in some other part of the brain
and keeping them constantly active, the vasomotor blood
dominancy will soon draw the congestion of blood and attention
away and cure the patient. Diseases of emotion may also be cured
by the enregistration of normal emotions and of scientific ideas
about the things (sentiments) that give rise to abnormal emotions,
and then re-functioning them. These methods combined with
special conative enregistrations and trainings can also be applied to
the cure of diseases of the will, such as aboulia, hyperboulia, and
the paraboulias. Gates found that the volitions and the will could
be strengthened and trained by a systematic introspection of the
mental process of willing, beginning with the simpler conations
and extending gradually to the more difficult and complex
processes, and more especially by means of inhibitive and
dirigative methods.
These methods of systematic mind-embodiment and brain-
building should find their highest utility in the attainment of a
higher degree of health and normality.
Another method of cure by selective libero-motor dirigation
was found: by dirigation the libero-motor impulses going from the
brain to any part of the body may be augmented, more blood thus
sent to that part, its metabolism increased, its growth and
functioning augmented, and some of its diseases cured.
A new method of cure was eunesthesiurgy. The esthesias are
the feelings, appetites, desires, emotions, sentiments; the good ones
are eunesthesias. A volitional excitement of them is esthesiurgy.
Eunesthesiurgy is the systematic re-functioning of the desirable or
good or happy esthesias. All growth and cure are due to
metabolism, and so is disease; to augment anabolism is at once to
augment health, while to cause catabolism is to produce disease.
Healing is accomplished by anabolism under the guidance of the

nerves, by the so-called curative powers of nature, and anabolism

creates the superabundant energy needed for such growth and cure.
A patient can be taught to functionate the good emotions more
often in a day than he had previously
[page 290]
done in a year, and to avoid the evil emotions and slowly get rid of
them. By this means the tide of life will be raised and the energy
of mentation increased.
Gates’ experiments indicated that one method of therapy will
consist in a medicinal and chemical modification of the
psychologic activities of the cells. He demonstrated that cells are
alive because they feel stimuli and can adapt acts to ends; since
only mind can feel and adapt, it follows that cells have simple and
elemental minds, and are alive for that reason. The functioning of
an organ consists in the combined functionings of its cells, and the
cells function mentally. To change the functioning of an organ it is
therefore necessary to modify the mentation of the cells. Gates
found that medicines are capable of modifying the psychologic
characteristics and functionings of cells and that in all cases where
medicines act curatively (germicides, deobstruents, protectives,
and anesthetics not considered), they do so only to the extent that
they influence the psychologic activities of the cells of that organ,
or nourish it as a food. Therefore, he believed that a study should
be made of the effect of all known medicines, chemicals, forces,
and foods upon the psychologic activities of unicellular organisms;
and when this is understood, an intelligent study can be made of
multicellular creatures and human diseases. Out of this a scientific
therapy should arise and achieve a successful adjunctive
therapeutic treatment for all diseases.
In the American Therapist of December 1895, Gates published
the article “Methods of Research in, and the Importance of,
Cellular Psychology”; and in the same number appeared an
appreciative editorial by the editor, Dr. John Aulde (“Gates has
spent many years studying cell metabolism and his experiments
upon dogs, rabbits, and guinea pigs run into the thousands; and the
results bid fair to open a new era in scientific medicine . . .”). In
the Medical Times for December 1897, appeared a more widely
noticed article by Gates on “Experimental Researches into the
Cause and Cure of Disease by New Methods and along New
Lines.” In the New York Herald on August 21, 1899,
[page 291]
there appeared a still more widely noticed article on “Forecasting
Disease.” As a result of these and other articles and lectures,

overtures were made to him to organize a department of Research,

but the necessary backing evidently was not obtained.
A new study of food values and their curative use, of the
improvement of foods to nourish the body and mind in health and
disease, has an importance that is difficult to estimate. By
selective propagation and regulation of the psychologic cell
activities of plants Gates found that any desirable chemical
constituent of a cereal, vegetable, or fruit could be augmented and
undesirable ones eliminated at the rate of one or more percent a
generation, up to a certain limit.
He considered the first concrete application of these methods to
be probably a bureau of Diagnosis to collect facts relating to all
methods of cure and their preliminary validation, and thus gather
the first complete list of inductive data regarding all known forms
of treatment. With these data as a starting point the methods of
psychurgic validation could be applied and new and more correct
data obtained for use as the conscious states in applying the
psychurgic art of discovery to the whole subject.
“No one who has witnessed the experiments in brain-building
and dirigation, or practiced the art of mentation, or seen the
experiments on cellular mentation, will for a moment doubt that
the secret for the cure of disease and attainment of health is to be
found in the study of the effects of forces and mental activities
upon the minds of cells in the animal body. Hence this paper may
be considered a first statement of a scientific and fundamental law
of cure—to be hereafter elaborated and rendered more definite by a
series of most interesting experimental researches.” So Gates
enthusiastically closed his article in the Medical Times.
A department of research was proposed relating to Foods and
Agriculture. At Chevy Chase for the first time foods were studied
with reference to their power to sustain nervous and mental
activity. During a mentative period of nine months Gates also
discovered the method of cell stimulation and selective
propagation
[page 292]
just mentioned. He reported to Popular Science News an
experiment by which in eleven generations the fat in a meadow
mushroom (Agaricus campestris) was increased to 2 1/2 percent of
its weight. The next result was the photochemical ripening of
perfumes and tastes and flavors in fruits; then came the
electrostatic perfume extractor. He found that unicellular foods
could be produced from propagating protists and other lowest
microorganisms, which could be cooked and eaten like other
foods. These one-celled organisms cannot be diseased, and
contain approximately all the nutrients of the higher animals and

plants. He found that many plants, of which the grapevine was

typical, absorb tastes and flavors directly from the soil, which
should therefore be guarded from certain manures or chemicals;
that certain chemicals used in the soil produce tastes in fruits; and
this led to his important discovery of the pedonic fertilizer, a
complement of the organically fixed nitrogen fertilizer he
discovered at Germantown in 1895. Other improvements were the
protective bag, moistureproof and germproof, for foods; a process
of non-contaminative fruit drying; an aseptic method of making
fruit juices and a non-leakable method of bottling; aseptic
fermentation of wine, ciders, and malt liquors; and a heated air
cooker with thermostat.
Another mentative period of five months led to agricultural
improvements, including a new method of selective propagation by
which, for instance, cotton, flax, and wheat could be made to grow
with a large yield on land previously producing nothing. It
amounted almost to a species of self-fertilizing plants capable of
growing with much less moisture than other plants of the same
species. Then came the invention of a cheap method of delinting
cottonseed in large quantities (patent allowed; basis of present
method); and an electric and other means of selecting the best
seeds and of extracting oil from seeds.
A department of Meteorology was proposed. At the request of
Professor Hazen of the Weather Bureau, Gates applied the art of
discovering to this subject of “a few facts and many
[page 293]
theories” and in a short period attained twenty-six new
experimental results, reported at the time, including the following:
Water evaporated more rapidly from a pan having a positive
electric charge than from one having a negative charge. Moisture
was carried from positive to negative areas with a speed greater
than the rate of diffusion. Oppositely-charged moisture particles
formed mist and rain where they met. A volume of air expanded
when charged electrostatically, producing a region of low
barometric pressure, while between such regions would be a high-
pressure area. The rotation of a body (orange or earth) in a
magnetic field (such as the sun’s) generated static electricity, thus
accounting for atmospheric electricity. This static electricity
would be unequally distributed because of differences in
temperature, moisture, dust, and other factors.
While at Germantown, Gates had invented means for vertical
flight, and had later improved on it. For Professor Hazen he flew a
small model vertically high in the sky; 11 miles was recorded,
although he stated it as 7 1/2. Hazen wrote exuberantly:

Gates—I am dizzy with joy. That was great—11 miles.

Won’t the old Weather Bureau crowd be green with envy when
they hear!! I have found the Gates to Meteorology. It does my
old heart good. Be out tomorrow, fix it up at my expense and
bring down some of that eleven-mile air.
Yours, HAZEN.
This model was similar to the self-propelled missile that Gates

in one test flew horizontally one mile in 6.5 seconds (553 m.p.h.).
In 1904, Gates considered making a practical flying machine to
enter the contest sponsored by the St. Louis Exposition, which
announced a prize of $200,000 for an airplane making the best
speed (at least 18 3/4 m.p.h.) over a ten-mile circuit three times
around three marking balloons on a right-angled course. These
modest requirements seem historically strange now, especially
[page 294]
the odd speed (reduced from a slightly higher earlier figure). The
prize was reduced, then dropped entirely, so Gates never undertook
the project.
Gates was interested that his mind also entered the domain of
Astronomy during this period, experimentally demonstrating
principles that the earth would be made to revolve about its axis
around the sun by the greater resistance of the half of the earth
nearest the lines of magnetic force from the sun. The earth, being
not completely transparent to magnetism, that half opposite the sun
would meet with less resistance and thus cause the earth to revolve
precisely as it does. It was also shown that the revolution of the
sun’s magnetic field would give the earth an orbital velocity and in
precisely the same direction as it is revolving. This was done in
nine weeks.
A proposed Department Y had for its purpose an experimental
investigation of those mental powers most recently dawning, of
those phenomena that are discernible when any mental faculty is
trained beyond certain usual limits, and of the so-called psychic
phenomena. Dirigation to sensory centers in the brain produces,
after a time, “images” of dreamlike vividness, and if continued
these become phantasms that are mistaken for realities (as
described in Chapter 7). Visual, auditory, tangial and other
phantasms may be thus produced, and if the investigator has not
experienced and learned to identify them, he cannot safely
undertake a subjective investigation of psychic phenomena nor
correctly interpret them in others. This is one of many ways that
psychurgic training is applicable. In the investigation of “physical

phenomena” of occultism, magianism, and spiritism Gates devised

many methods and special instruments that made trickery and
fraud practically impossible. In one method the investigator is
trained to see in such complete darkness that the medium believes
he cannot be seen; electric and photic devices automatically record
every movement of the subject. If after removing all kinds of
physical deception there were any phenomena remaining, they
should belong to the mental realm and could be investigated. One
of many devices was the Unknown Objects Room, in which
[page 295]
an unknown number of unknown objects were put in a closed
room. Mediums were invited to allow their controls to describe the
contents; psychometrists, clairvoyants, intuitive persons, mystics,
and occultists were invited, and for several years their answers
were recorded. The room was then opened, and facts were
compared with answers. An object wrapped in felt was
hermetically sealed in an opaque glass tube and went the rounds of
the world and hundreds tried to tell what was inside. A slate and
pencil were also enclosed the same way and sent to slate-writing
mediums. Although some mediums claimed that “spirits” could
write on the slate, it came back blank. Gates wrote to an associate
that in his Chevy Chase darkroom over a thousand mediums and
such people had been tested, and he was sure they were glad his
results had not been reported. But, he pointed out, besides
methods of “psychic research” there were other and much more
important methods revealed by psychurgy, from a wholly new
standpoint and by wholly new experimental methods of this
department, which he later called Cognobiotics. Pearlie Edson was
named director and custodian of its records and manuscripts.
A department of Thermodynamics was proposed. Gates made
one application of the art of discovering to that branch of physics
relating to heat. This resulted in the heated oxygen jet for quickly
melting and cutting metals and the superheated hydrogen jet for
autogenous welding and non-contaminative casting (in his use, he
later noted, five years before patented elsewhere); a melted-
metallic-filament electric light; a method of increasing the highest
temperatures otherwise producible, giving methods of casting and
purifying metals, making glass and baking china or porcelains,
reducing ores, and nodulizing fines; the inverted-dome smelter; a
fusible slag; reducing titaniferous ores.
Various other departments were proposed, such as Electrical
Separation, Mining, Optics and Photography, Cooling and Heating,
Ordnance and War, Production and Transmission of Energy; but
the one especially dear to Gates’ heart was Acoustics and Music.
Since at that time acoustics was the most clearly demarcated

[page 296]
branch of physics, Gates selected it to study how the mind learned
a science, and worked it over many times. A later phase of his
work was conducted in the specially constructed Music Hall of his
Chevy Chase laboratories. The first notice of his work in this field
appeared in the press during the spring of 1899, as in the Boston
Evening Transcript for April 22: “Marvels of Science; Wonder
Work Turned Out by Elmer Gates; New Instruments for Producing
Emotional Music—The Psychology of Acoustics,” written by the
friendly correspondent and frequent visitor to the Gates
laboratories, Rene Bache.
Much later, about 1913, Gates wrote in a letter: “Now I do
truly believe in these discoveries and inventions as a dawning of a
new era in music. I desire that they do not make their first
appearance as a mere moneymaking enterprise but under high
artistic auspices, clothed in the majesty of their high ideals. I
would like the world first to hear the soul-entrancing tones and
harmonies and melodies of the new music from the biggest and
most expensive and complete exhibition instrument; hear it in a
music hall built for the purpose, in a music-loving city whose
emotionally-ready people have the artistic instincts to appreciate it,
and perhaps also to see its profound religious meanings.”
He invented a new way to make musical tones for a keyed
instrument without wires, reeds, pipes, strings, or other usual
means—one that cannot get out of tune, and in which a great
number of instruments can be combined into one. He also
invented the important method of making pure tones. He was
unable to find in any musical instrument a single note that did not
contain at least two overtones that were mutually discordant; and
when these overtones were prevented, a tone was produced of
extraordinary beauty and inward “grip”— “the tone that will be
heard around the world and make all listeners happier.” He found
the pure tone “ravishing; it subdues and thrills the inner,
introspective subconscious nature.” It produced a pure tone-
feeling (which he called tonesis) that is not experienced if discords
are present; likewise a melody of pure tones will produce a
[page 297]
pure melody-feeling (melodesis), both being different from
emotion. The difference between musical feeling (mousikesis,
which comprises tonesis, harmonesis, melodesis, rhythmesis and
such), and emotion was arrived at by his psychophysical studies.
A pure tone cannot be described; it must be heard.
Gates also discovered methods to vary at will the tone-quality
of any note or all notes at once, making all sad and mournful for a

sad piece, so that the tonesis and harmonesis and melodesis may
accentuate it, or likewise making all notes cheerful and gay, and so
on throughout the range of mousikesic experience. (At present, as
is well known, the quality of all tones of an instrument, such as the
piano, is fixed.) These pure tones, in which each one of the
overtones can be varied to change the feeling-quality tonesis, were
indescribably beautiful; the “hearing of them will be a revelation,”
he exclaimed; and when once heard—even a single note, but
preferably at least an octave, to thus hear the tonic and
subdominant chords—it “will be realized that the Gospel of Music
has been revealed.”
He also developed an overtone music, a true and complete
musical scale, and new methods for the psychophysical measuring
and training of professional musicians and singers. Of this
overtone music he wrote:
“I remember the first time I heard a musical note; it was an old
form of piano called a melodeon. I struck a bunch of keys and the
reverberations, as they died away, almost made me swoon with
emotion (but the feeling was more than mousikesis). It touched the
inner world through introspection more than melody and rhythm or
harmony, and out of it came the invention of my introspective
overtone music, the effect of which is, more truly than any other
music, to ‘call the past out of the grave and the future out of its
cradle and make the present one sweet eternity.’
“Music is something more than an esthesic and esthetic art,” he
wrote elsewhere, “something more than an individual predilection
or social tool: it is fundamentally also a mode of religious
expression. It stands apart from all evanescent beliefs and
[page 298]
theories like a beacon in the upper clear-air purity of its own
eternal Heights. It normalizes all the feelings and emotions and
aspirations while its divine Light illuminates, shining straight into
the heart of mankind. . . .The words of a song may utter falsehood
and cruelty, but the tone and melody will instill truth and kindness.
Music speaks a universal language. Its inward meanings cannot be
side-tracked and perverted by any use made of it; it assumes a deep
religious mood towards that which is eternally The Highest and
not merely towards the particular God-belief of any age. It excites
transports of religious exaltations that are independent of any of
the transitory theologies with whose rituals it may at any time be
yoked. But the musical feelings have been simply growing dearer
and deeper and not changing like the myths and teachings, for the
joy that music gives comes from the Depths and the Heights of the
eternal nature of Consciousness.

“These musical discoveries have given me great joy—and they

will bring nothing but joy and beauty to the world. They open a
new era in the history of music. It will enter upon a new and
greater career; its beauty will be augmented and its influence be
more profoundly felt in the deeps of human nature; its social power
will be increased, and its message to the world made more
important and far-reaching.”
He considered his main contribution to the science and art of
music, as to all departments, the application of the arts of
discovery, validation, invention, and doing creative work, which
comprise what he named heurotechny. He had great hopes for this
department of Acoustics and Music. Its main mentative assets
were kept secret, its inventions not included in the mortgaged list;
but before leaving Chevy Chase, he realized with regret that he
probably would not have time for its further development.
As late as 1920, Vladimir Karapetoff, consulting engineer in
acoustics and electrical engineering and professor of electrical
engineering at Cornell University, heard of Gates’ work in certain
problems of acoustics and music, and after meeting him in New
York,
[page 299]
wrote: “I cannot tell you how much I appreciated meeting you, and
having the privilege of listening to your description of your various
inventions, and your observations upon the workings of the human
mind. The influence of such a meeting is always far reaching for
me, in that it adds courage and inspiration to work on bigger
things, and let smaller things in life go.”
It was at Chevy Chase that many psychologic discoveries were
made or further developed, as in volitional training, the volitional
factor of conation and the conscious factor of volition, as well as in
teleotaxis, which is the grouping into one unit—one mental
integrant—of all the mental states and acts that are made in
carrying out a given purpose. In judgment-training Gates
discovered principles and methods to test and train pupils in the
sanity and skill of judgment in practical affairs; it was not so much
lack of ability as of training under conditions when the judgment
could be verified. He proved by experiment that when a person
has the opportunity to verify his judgments accurately, he soon
learns to judge accurately. If he is shown a hundred successive
persons known to the teacher to be perverts, thieves, liars,
tubercular, truthful, so that his judgments may be verified
immediately, he soon learns to make almost no mistakes. But if he
never learns the differences, his judgment remains faulty. That
such a training exceeded in practical value all others, Gates stood
ready to demonstrate. Also he found judgment of values to be

rarely sane, being generally based on some wholly fictitious and

useless ends, especially social judgments. Then again, a judgment
is rarely based on weighing all evidence, but usually on
prejudgment and prejudice, or on some temporary and unimportant
emotion, mood, or caprice. That a habit can be formed by a course
of mind-training to remedy this situation, he was also prepared to
demonstrate.
It was at Chevy Chase that the principles and methods of
auturgy were further developed, auturgic validation discovered,
and sociurgy outlined. Three of the new methods of introspection
were discovered and their states and processes formulated, and the
method of introspective validation was developed and
[page 300]
tested—so new that it would be understood only by students who
learned it.
Gates made investigations relating to Ontogeny and Auturgy.
All his life he kept a careful diary, but from 1894 to 1908 he gave
it much more attention, keeping the “Introspective Diary” in order
to have a full record of both inner and outer series of events so that
he might study his life as a whole—as one individual among a
society of individuals, one of the creatures of the Cosmos. He thus
hoped to learn to what extent his ontogeny passively repeated
phylogeny and to what extent it could be modified by his initiative.
His daily record was turned into a new line of psychologic
research.
This study of successive periods and phases of development in
light of ontogeny and auturgy, and of events he could control and
could not, enabled him to reach important convictions of a
practical character regarding Fate and Free Will, expressed in some
of his writings.
This “Introspective Diary” was voluminous; for that reason he
would summarize and generalize it every so often to keep it within
bounds. In it he saw himself as a third person, beholding the
stream of his inner life mingling with that of the outer series of
events; and by studying successes and failures long after their
practical excitations had passed he could see opportunities lost and
dangers that might have been avoided. He profited thereby; but
not conspicuously, he noted, in what the world calls material or
social success. He was striving for another kind: to make
discoveries and know reality. His whole life was planned
accordingly, and its ups and downs were studied with reference to
that aim.
In this “Introspective Diary,” he emphasized, were truthfully
recorded his secret moods and motives; all judgments regarding
opportunities and plans and dangers; all those indefinite intuitions,

promptings of the feelings, urgings of the emotions, premonitions,

and such, so that he might judge their value in the light of after-
related events. He also practiced utterly random improvisation,
proving that much of the richest fruitage of his
[page 301]
mind would have been lost without this freedom of expression
through all the mind’s faculties and upon all subjects under all
emotive dominancies. While he found direct evidence that his
emotions, conations, and subconscious processes, like his
cognitions, were causatively related to the Cosmic Reality, there
was also evidence that this series of motions and processes could
be directed through the initiative of a new idea being born into the
world, thus setting up a different series of conations and physical
motions than otherwise. If the new ideas were true, the trains of
consequences thus started would be desirable, while if they were
untrue, results of conduct based on them would be bad. Hence to
know the truth, and all of it possible, became a duty. Truth is
consonant with reality. He could voluntarily decide upon
mentation upon any subject and thus bring into the world a new
initiative according to which conduct could be willed. This telic
and alethic auturgy represents the highest ideal of conduct.
Through it man becomes emancipated from Fate and largely makes
his own history, he optimistically concluded.
In this diary Gates recorded not only outer events beyond his
control but events resulting from his plans. He also recorded all
changes in his tastes, abilities, beliefs, moral and ethical and
philosophical convictions, joys and sorrows, and especially all
promptings of that cumulative desire for a closer contact with the
non-individual and cosmic factors in his life and mind. He
recorded the exact dates and places and conditions under which he
attained hundreds of new and true ideas. He made a number of
important discoveries about the nature and tendencies of his own
character, abilities, and limitations, some being of general
application. This record by which the spontaneous development of
inherited social tendencies was controlled with events due to his
initiative was a unique study of a life, here and now, in its
personal, social, and cosmic relations.
Perhaps the fundamental idea was the study of those factors
that were outside and underneath all his plans, so that he could
catch, if possible, a glimpse of their trend. Humanity is part of a
greater Cosmic Process in whose current it passively drifts.
[page 302]
And so with the individual: only a small part of its course is the
outcome of voluntarily planned effort. This greater life of the

Cosmos, this Tao, expresses itself in its own way, not only in the
outer series of events of the environment but also in the
subconscious and conscious inner life, Gates pointed out in his
“Synopsis of 1900.” His diary was an attempt to gather data
indicative of the trend and character of that non-individual and
cosmic process in him and outside him; and to discover what
practical relations he might have to it. He noted interesting
progress; he had satisfied himself that his life had its destiny pretty
well marked out by conditions and processes outside his control;
but within that orbit there was ample room for voluntary and
initiative effort. “Whether it be a reversion to phylogenctic
instincts or a growth towards something to which the human race
is just attaining, I know not; but this I know, that this practice tends
to strengthen my religious nature,” he wrote.
But one of the best results of his researches was the discovery
and formulation of the science of Consciousness, which he called
cognostics, a science more fundamental than the psychology that
had been known, dealing with the nature, laws, and activities of the
very Consciousness that forms the basis of conscious states and out
of which they arise. This consciousness of Consciousness, called
cognosis, underlies the mental states and operations as the stream
underlies the bubbles and waves on its surface. Cognosis is more
fundamental than sensory perception or inductive and deductive
reasoning, and out of it has arisen a wholly new science whose
data have been derived by a more direct and immediate kind of
knowing. Its data are known absolutely and not relatively and
therefore are a criterion of truth that is infallible in those domains
to which it applies and thereby establishes data that are applicable
to all domains. The art of discovery applied to epistemology led to
this standard of knowledge, a fundamental basis of truth; and out
of it, in connection with other principles of psychurgy, Gates
evolved at Chevy Chase the scientific art of validating knowledge,
the most important of the various arts comprising psychurgy. He
considered cognostics and
[page 303]
the art of validation the crowning achievements of psychurgy!
In working out an exposition of cognostics and validation he
had to invent a systematic terminology for psychology, a special
system of nomenclature for psychurgy, and symbols, signs, and
formulas for both. He found, according to his report, the
terminology of psychology “in a chaos and utterly inadequate”; not
only were terms insufficient but those given in dictionaries and
textbooks were vaguely defined. For psychurgy, and especially for
cognostics, he devised an entirely new set of terms. He began by
giving a separate name and symbol to each distinct kind of

conscious state and each process of states (some several hundred),

and to each kind of mental operation he gave a sign. In this way he
could indicate, somewhat as in an algebraic formula, the relation,
interactions, mutual modifications, and products of the states,
processes, and operations. The truth of any formula, having once
been established by cognostics and validation, made it possible to
derive corollaries that might otherwise remain unknown. And
these formulas could then be used as instruments of investigation.
In many respects this could be considered the application of
mathematics to psychology— “an algebra of the conscious
processes.” Without these symbols, signs, and formulas cognostics
would be obscure, and the psycho-technical methods of mind
training and discovering and validating would be almost
impractical. “To the student who masters these subjects it will
some day be of historical interest that they were discovered and
worked out at Chevy Chase.”
It was at Chevy Chase, the report continued, that Gates applied
the art of discovering to philosophy and was led to discover and
formulate the psychurgic method of philosophy. He then applied
this method to ontology, and he was led to identify and classify
and define fully the various kinds of Being, “thus lighting up the
jungle of ontological conceptions and definitions in which
philosophy has been hopelessly lost.”
It was at Chevy Chase that he applied these methods and the
psychurgic method of science to the problem of cosmic causality
and energy, and thereby identified a new kind of energy
[page 304]
that is the basis of the causal connection between Consciousness
and physics.
One aspect of his philosophical point of view is expressed in a
letter to his friend, the Reverend Oliver H. P. Smith, written
February 18, 1902, some of the first part of which follows:
“My liking for and leaning towards philosophy has always
been so strong that it delights me to meet a man who can induce
me to occasionally break away from the rigid barriers of inductive
research and give free play to hypotheses regarding Matter,
Motion, and Mind—their noumenal cause, origin, destiny. My
training, and especially my psychurgic work, has rendered me
suspicious of all metaphysical aphorisms and epistemological
dicta, and I studiously avoid all influence of theory while engaged
in mentation for discovery and invention. But when the serious
work of the day or week has temporarily ended, I delight to
commune with the Idealists, occultists, mystics, and philosophers,
for I always find that, whilst their premises and conclusions are

often wrong, their insight is nearly always upward and in the right
direction.
“Research requires that I deal with only unquestionable facts,
and therefore, when my investigations have ended for a time, I all
the more delight to play truant to the rules of a posteriori
empiricism and meditatively brood upon a priori principles and
necessary truths, that seem to constitute the character and destiny
of phenomena. But, my friend and brother, I am not attacking
philosophy in general or metaphysics in particular, for I have
ventured to hope that my forthcoming books will reveal a new and
practical basis for experimental (!) metaphysics—shall I say it?—
an inductive basis! I think I have demonstrated it inductively and
convincingly but do not mean I have proved all or any
considerable part of the statements of metaphysicians to be true. I
cannot describe in a letter what requires a book but I can hint at a
few phases as follows:
“Psychology is the science of the mind and its experiences. A
synthesis of its six kinds of experiences constitutes the only
[page 305]
true interpretation of the universe possible to us. To the extent that
this is not based on the facts of these experiences, to that extent it
will be a false philosophy. . . . I am re-observing the phenomena of
the sciences according to the psychologic principles of the art of
using the mind, so my understanding of the universe, as far as my
knowledge goes, will not be corrupted and vitiated by theory and
hypothesis.
“Now, where is there room for the a priori and metaphysics? I
reply: in auturgic introspection, where the mind may have
experience with itself. The investigator will discover that the mind
has a certain nature; and that each intellective, emotive, and
volitional state has its own natural history; and he will learn to
know himself. Such knowledge is of utmost value—it is all
inductive. Such experiences will differ in individuals, according to
their mental degree of evolutionary development, skill, and
knowledge content. But there is still another line of introspective
investigation, based on the demonstrable fact that you may not
only introspect your conscious states as they arise, but that you
may become AWARE of these introspections; that is, the mind has
its own inherent, immanent, cosmic nature of which you may
become directly and immediately (not mediately) aware, and this
IMMANENT and essential nature of mind conditions all its
experience-content, and in becoming introspectively aware of that
immanent nature of that Cosmic Process called your mind, you are
acquiring in the strictest sense of the word inductive data. And
what you inductively find to be the essential nature of

Consciousness, and of your Awareness of that Consciousness,

constitutes the inductive basis of metaphysics! Do you see it? If
you don’t, call at Chevy Chase some day. Your mind is as surely a
cosmic process as the formation of a planet or the evolution of life.
Your mind is the Universe-hood in you: it is the Eternal Process at
work in you, and in studying it introspectively you are studying it
inductively. It is as much an inductive experience to become aware
of an introspective state as it is to become conscious of the pain
from a bee-sting, or the color of a flower. It
[page 306]
is as truly an inductive datum to become aware of the immanent
nature of Consciousness as it is to know how it feels to put your
hand in the fire.
“Now, that which is an unchangeable characteristic of the
Awareness is that which underlies all knowledges—creates and
conditions them—and a collection of such introspective data is a
collection of inductive data, and is just as capable of being
experimentally verified, classified, and generalized as are the data
of acoustics or psychophysics; and the result of such study of the
Awareness is a metaphysic. I am sorry to be so brief; suffice it to
say, there can be no other metaphysics”
Mr. Smith, a Methodist minister connected with the Waseca
(Minnesota) Assembly School of Christian Sociology, carried on
an extended correspondence with Gates during the years 1895-
1902, writing philosophical thought “of a high order.” On one of
Smith’s letters Gates had annotated, “This man is a thinker!” Mr.
Smith desired to come to Washington and be the mouthpiece for
researches of the Elmer Gates Laboratories, especially in religious
applications, but he never came. Later, in 1911, he suffered a
nervous breakdown (dying the next year), and Gates wrote to him
in appreciation partly as follows:
“I esteem you as a close friend, inwardly granting you the
privileges of a close friend although I have never seen you. I am
glad such things can be. I have never tried to analyze why you
thus affected me from the first; why there was room for you in my
inner life, while for so many others who sought it, I could not grant
what I gave you without the asking.”
For over fourteen years, it required persistent and almost
unremitting attention by Elmer Gates to comprehend the broad
new subject of cognostics and to expound it so that he might hope
to be understood. From the new cognostic standpoint he had to
reconsider the whole of psychurgy and the art of validation,
reconstruct the system of classification, and retrain his mind
according to the new methods.

Cognostics gives conclusive proof that in a somewhat similar

way to chemical combination, when one conscious state is
simultaneously
[page 307]
present in consciousness with another conscious state, they will
unite, if the proper mental processes are applied, and produce a
new mental integrant. These conscious states—each having
different properties, qualities, and cognitive values—unite through
the influence of the cosmically constituted natures that underlie
them and according to conscious, subconscious, and cosmic
processes. The resultant mental integrant is a new kind of
conscious state, having properties, qualities, and cognitive values
that differ from those of the original states. When the right kinds
of states are thus allowed to act upon each other in the right way
according to the psychurgic art, the result is new knowledge.
Cognostics! That new knowledge of Consciousness was
fulfilling the promise of Gates’ researches and hopes—was
fulfilling his life!
[page 308: blank]

[page 309]
CHAPTER 15
The Bridge to Validation
The desire for some method of sifting the proved from the vast
mass of the unproved led over the bridge of introspection into the
new domain of validation.
—ELMER GATES
The life and goals of Elmer Gates cannot be understood apart

from his progress in introspection (or introtechnics, as he called its
arts), leading to cognosis and the art of validation.
At Germantown researches were begun into the volitional
factor of conation and the conscious factor of volition, and its
dirigative control from alethic motives only (auturgy) as the secret
of the highest moral and ethical life. Important results were
attained in Gates’ study of consciousness and introspection. His
first insight into the possibility of introspectively identifying the
volitional mental unit that is the self-active conscious factor in a
conation was that during the whole of phylogenetic organic
evolution the act of will has been more frequently performed than
any other conscious state, almost as frequently as all others
combined, it being attendant upon every act of consciousness, the
precursor of every act of attention, the concomitant of every bodily
movement. So automatic and subconscious has it become that the
conscious state that is the volitional factor cannot be
[page 310]
detected. His second insight was that by frequently practicing the
act of volitioning and simultaneously introspecting it by the new
techniques it might be isolated and identified. He repeated
systematically each of the various kinds of conation several hours
daily, but it was nearly three years before the volitional factor was
introspected.
An act or conation involves thinking, feeling, and doing, and
has an intellective, or cognitive, element, such as image, concept,
idea; an emotive, or feeling, element, such as desire, fear, hate,
love; and a volitional, or will, element that puts into motion the
anatomical and physiological processes that accomplish the truth
that is cognized or the utility or beauty that is felt. To avoid
tautology, he called the volitional, or will, factor of the will the
bulic factor, or boule (from the Greek boulesis, “boule”)—
meaning the self-active part, the will-act per se.
The word will in common usage, and even in psychologic
terminology, involves many factors that are not properly volitional.

When an act has been decided upon and the motion is about to be
executed, there is that something done in the mind which is neither
intellection, emotion, nor conation, but which sets in motion the
execution of the deed. This also sets in motion the psychal interval
or process which as the willing-process is the volitional element of
conation.
Gates’ own introspection taught him that choice is not a matter
of will at all, but a predominance of intellective judgment and
emotive preference, because the thing chosen cannot be willed.
The nature of consciousness is such that the intellective and
emotive content will make the choice. You prefer a pleasure to a
pain not because you will not to like the pain, but because that is
the nature of mind.
It was at the Chevy Chase laboratories that his first successful
experiments were concluded, but Gates had been holding the
problem prospectively in mind for at least ten years. His diary
records over 368 experiments made during three weeks in
December 1896, during which time he devoted his entire
attention—over sixteen hours daily—to them. Since 1890, when
he first
[page 311]
practiced dirigating coenesthesia of the frontal lobes of the cortex
and intellective dirigation, no other practice had been so tiring.
A valuable part of these experiments consisted in living for one
hour daily an ideal life intellectively, emotively, and volitionally to
form a periodicity of habit whose influence extended over several
hours.
Inhibition played a great part: in volition, Gates estimated, 90
percent was subconscious, with only 1/4 percent of purposively
willed conations, the remainder being spontaneities to be inhibited.
Control may be exercised over inhibitions to make them
subconscious and thus waste less energy, and over body and
environment for fewer intrusive spontaneities, he found. But
mental life may be directed by truth willed into action
(alethobulically, as he called it) to avoid nearly all spontaneities so
that they need not even be inhibited.
Finally he no longer had to will the inhibition of an intrusive
state; it began to be done subconsciously (“Cosmically—how
wonderful,” he exclaimed), and only those states relating to his
subject came into awareness. “I never knew this before; it was
never possible because my will was motive-governed, now it is
more bulic. Heretofore my conations were effectively willed, now
some are purely intellectobulic,” he wrote.
For best subconscious mentation, business and domestic affairs
must be so arranged that they could be dropped for a time. The

mentator must be free to allow the day’s mentation to upset all

previous plans without regret, even if incurring financial or social
losses. Best alethic mentation can never come to one who is not
free and eager to have all his plans and years of labor upset by the
next day’s insight. (So was his life guided.) Through the ages
feelings have guided. Survival of the fittest, at the mercy of
environment, is the rule at lower stages of evolution, but as more
mind is embodied the mental factor becomes more dominant and
the environment-molding creature appears. But he is almost
wholly moved to act by desire, emotions, affections. The strongest
motive is based on emotions of a selfish kind. Not until the highest
motive can be willed despite affective states is man free from
[page 312]
automatism. It will be a great step when man wills the conation
that he knows he ought to will. The value of this insight into
alethobulic conation is mostly in a method of research, Gates
commented; one must know what is true before he will trust it.
One result was that the goal of his psychologic plans should be
to prepare people for this kind of conation—which is intellectually,
instead of emotionally, willed. This meant he must make a
collection and verification of the mentative data of human
knowledge, must have a place and means to verify it and keep it,
and where people can learn it—a laboratory for research so “truth
may be sought and the raw materials ready for the next Great
Step—the discovery and immediate conation of truth when
knowing and willing are one and when what is known and willed is
immediately loved as nothing else can be loved.”
A study of Awareness in connection with the bulic factor
would lead to the acme of psychologic discovery so far as his
ability permitted, Gates anticipated with eagerness. “I eliminate
from my consciousness every special state by calling up each class
one at a time: such as color, sound, taste, musculations, images,
emotions; and I notice among the variable groups of conscious
states one invariable factor. Is it Consciousness per se or is it a
different order of Consciousness as Awareness? In prolonged
quiescence under favorable conditions I have seemingly been
aware, but not of any special conscious content. Thus I taste sugar;
the taste is sweet. The sweet is my conscious content, the
consciousness is not something plus sweet, but take away the
sweet and no taste remains. That is, the conscious sensory state
disappears with the consciousness we call sweet. The same with
every sensation, systemic or organic feeling, intellection, emotion,
conation. I know for I have just been trying it. But when the
conscious states disappear my Awareness does not. What I call

Awareness remains unaltered, and I know it remains the witness of

each passing state.
“I will a conscious state, such as a memory, to come out of my
subconsciousness, and it comes. What a marvel! I issue the
volitional fiat and behold, it is done. What greater wonder?
[page 313]
Behold how insidiously this new insight has dawned in my mind. I
have direct knowledge of differences between Consciousness
Awareness, and the bulic factor of volition. I am aware that I am
conscious of the states of self-consciousness. This is my
experience with my mind.”
After many years of most sincere and earnest devotion to mind,
he felt he was at last getting within sight of the highest domain-the
ultimate psychologic point of view. He now knew where and
which way to look.
He saw he was not to do the work he had so long planned, but
must delegate it to others as soon as they were trained, and devote
his time to researches in the new regime. He felt that a new order
of discovery was at hand. “I cannot banish from my mind the
intense expectancy that I might discover a power of the mind
unknown. Perhaps my experience with Awareness and the bulic
factor amounts to it. Has anyone ever before willed without
affective content?”
In his diary, December 9, 1896, he wrote: “I must remove from
myself all resentment and prejudice; to act only according to
universal love; to plan only when Boule or Awareness is
uppermost. They are never selfish. Why?”
One immediate result was the discovery that the isolation of the
bulic state in consciousness was the first prerequisite to will-
training. The chief result, however, was the training he received in
controlling the will. “The record of experiments does not convey
how difficult they were; the main and important results cannot be
written now,” he wrote, “because I have no words to use and no
skill in expounding a subject so new to me. “I have somewhat
freely given sentences illustrative of my emotional and reverential
attitude toward mind. My desire and aspiration and prospection
for more knowledge I regard as a prayer to Mind; not in any
mystical but in a purely physiologic and psychologic sense. I want
a new insight; I must desire to solve a problem, before the
subconscious processes will go to work. That by a conscious
desire and idea and volition I should be able to set to work that
Cosmic Process called Mind is to me so overwhelming

[page 314]
a mystery that I stand amazed and say, 0 wondrous Mind, give me
more light. And when further light comes I am just as wonder-
struck as when through an idea, an image, a desire, and a volition I
call upon this Cosmic Process in me to move my arm, or recall a
memory, and forthwith my arm moves and the memory is flashed
into consciousness.”
The plan of the institutional work was also first formulated
while at Germantown, and preliminary tasks were outlined. For
instance, it would be harmful in mental training to re-functionate
accepts, theories, false ideas, and untrue images of a science;
therefore Gates saw it necessary first to collate and verify the data
of the science by induction and eliminate theories by re-
observation. It would not he easy; the literature was large, and an
enormous amount of experimental work must be done with a large
laboratory and many trained workers. But the main difficulty was
that there was no scientific criterion or standard of truth. Induction
is only relative, its facts known only in relation to other facts. In
addition, suggestibility is almost constantly a source of errors,
while those more fundamental than theory or hypothesis, like
sensory illusions, may be inwrought in the higher mental
processes. The questions seemed very formidable, but he hoped
that by the aid of psychurgic methods they would be solved. If
there is anything true in human knowledge, it has been discovered
by mind, and since mind has consciousness as its underlying
factor, he felt that in some way the secret lay enshrined in the
phenomenon of Consciousness.
Before he went to Germantown, most of the main principles
and methods of psychurgy had been solved, but there Gates
accomplished a much further development of the science of
introspection and the art of introspecting; a whole new domain of
subjective experience was opened, although its full significance
was not at first realized. It consisted in causing consciousness to
make a study of its own activities and experiences with itself in a
far more fundamental way than ever before. A new kind of logical
process, more fundamental than induction, was discovered
[page 315]
and an art of consciousing was deduced. At Chevy Chase further
developments were achieved.
Only a few students have psychologic ability, and fewer yet
can introspect, Gates found, so they have not the introspective
experience that would make the description of his experiments
understood. To many writers introspection was nothing more than
morbid self-analysis. But after a student has his mind and brain
rebuilt so that his mental content will include all the data of some

one science without false images and concepts and ideas, he can be
taught to identify and name each normal and true kind of conscious
state and process of states in each kind of intellective faculty.
When once he can bring each state and process into use and name
it, and bring into activity each esthesia and name it, and perform
each kind of single, compound, and complex conation and name it,
then, and only then, can he be taught to do things with his
intellective faculties that will enable practice in the real and new
and experimental introspection. Until then much may be
misunderstood and seem unreal.
For this reason Gates decided early not to divulge the details of
his introspective discoveries, except to pupils who could repeat his
experiments and had the character to use them only for the highest
scientific, moral, and ethical purposes. In one of his last writings
(1922), however, he points out that a study of his manuscript on
Introtechnics should make much of his findings self-evident
without the student’s having to acquire the introspective skill.
Even if the reader could not cross the “bridge,” he would know it
was there. “It is not too much to claim for this line of research,”
Gates ventured, “that it has opened up to the mind an entirely new
domain of human experience and disclosed a new kind of human
faculty; but to the truth of these claims the pupil’s own experience
must attest.”
The remainder of this chapter is quoted or adapted from his

exposition of introtechnics, and though technical, will describe this
bridge of introspection that led to the new validation.
[page 316]
It was a scientific study by experimental and statistical
methods of the Light Within, or conscience, and of judgments and
their value, that led to the discovery of the new methods and
techniques of introspection. Quiescence was the necessary
technique of the New Introspection, but its most surprising feature
was its meaningless wholes. The entrance into this new Inner
World from the familiar and obsessing influences of the Outer
World and its Outmost Region was accomplished, as it were, by a
new kind of inner vision capable of seeing in the dark, of seeing
the outlines and moving forms of the speechless things that inhabit
this Inner World—things seen by the apperceptive attention but
continuing to be dark and masked forms to this first stage of this
inner vision. The things, or “objects,” of this Inner World are
states and processes of states. “State” is the psychurgic term for
any mental complex that can be discriminated and classified as a
whole. For example, a sensation of red, an image of a horse, a
feeling of pain, an emotion of anger, are cognitive states. These

states are seen by apperception as cognitive meanings, but

introspection sees them as meaningless things or wholes. The
mind knows the meanings of these states and processes, but the
New Introspection looks at them dumbly—not knowing or caring
what they mean, bewildered by the diversity and stream-like
procession of these psychal wholes, the creatures of the subjective
part of the introspector’s cosmos.
There goes one now—a state. Behold it! To apperceptive
attention it is a sensation, pain, feeling, emotion, image, concept,
desire, purpose, mood, or some other cognitive mental whole.
Behold it with the Inner World attention, or introspection, and if it
is not also apperceived, it will have none of these cognitive
meanings it will simply be a psychal whole to which the
apperception has attached such meanings as have grown out of the
introspector’s particular experience in a particular environment.
But to introspection at this stage, that psychal whole will be the
most plainly introspected whole of a group of such wholes,
constituting a stream of states (James) ever flowing out of the
subconscious; a flowing unbidden—impelled and urged by
[page 317]
non-volitional goings-on in the organism. Sometimes the stream is
narrow or wide, rapid or slow, clear and placid or obstructed and
raging. From waking to sleeping, and even during sleep, this
chaotic and seemingly purposeless mob of states marches through
this Inner World as if with sealed orders. This stream changes
character from youth to age; its wholes correspond to the degree of
the introspector’s evolution and his environment. An inventory of
the states, classified, is the cognitive mental content of meanings,
but to introspection each state is a sphinx. Apperception sees the
meanings, introspection does not—and this is the most
conspicuous of the new things that the New Introspection teaches.
This being devoid of meanings to introspection is what misled
James and other psychologists, who apperceptively analyzed the
meanings of the wholes instead of introspectively seeing them as
meaningless psychal things.
I see it yet—that surprised glimpse of my first entrance into the
midst of these stalking specters of the Inner World; almost always
there is a central specter (state) highly illuminated by the
searchlight of spontaneous or voluntary attention, surrounded by a
motley group of less illuminated (associated, concomitant, and
adjunctive) states that fade into invisibility at the ends and margins
of the stream; states entering abruptly into this stream through
external and internal stimuli; states of all kinds. 0 the excitement
of it! when I first actually saw that stream of psychal wholes
without seeing the cognitive meanings. I learned to tell when the

main and habitual stream was going on, when external stimuli
thrust into it their kind of wholes, and when internal stimuli thrust
into it their kind of wholes. A new natural history of the
phenomena of the waking mind was being created.
The special technique that makes these results easy is the
systematic practice of bodily, physiologic, and psychologic
quiescence during artificially maintained favorable conditions to
attain an introspective dominancy. The introspector must silence
the roar of his brain-machinery. In this way not only the glares and
noises but also the clouds and fogs are obviated, and the
[page 318]
introspector steadies himself. Quiescence prepares not only that
which is introspected but also that which introspects.
For the viewpoint of the Newer Introspection, look at one of
the central states in the stream. Like a leviathan it is crowding
other states out of its way. Introspection, taking care not to see its
meanings, sees only the psychal “size,” or quantity, of that whole,
and its duration, and its orderly (not syntactical) relation to other
wholes—and all these factors are new scientific data.
Introspection sees also the psychal parts of a state, their number
and combinations and intensities—sees them as meaningless facts;
and all these are new kinds of facts, constituting a psychal anatomy
of states, a psychanatomy. It is a great discovery to know that a
state is a manifold, and to be able to study it as such; every feeling
or sensation or image or emotion is a manifold. It is made up of
psychal parts in orderly and taxic, but not spatial, arrangement with
varying intensities and durations of these parts. Each combination
of parts, number of parts, intensity or duration of a part, has or may
have a cognitive meaning experientially associated with it
according to the memory with which it happens to be enregistered.
This is the basic insight into the temporal, local, and individualistic
nature of cognition. Psychanatomy is a new science. It is not
Freud’s psychoanalysis nor anything like it.
The characteristic technique of this Newer Introspection is re-
functioning a state until it acquires a greater vividness and
definiteness, and is freed from associative, concomitant, and
adjunctive states, becoming so dominantly active that it is not only
the most conspicuous state in the stream but so far as the directed
attention is concerned, the only state. This technique also involves
a re-functioning of the introspective attention until it can “see”
with greater sensitiveness and distinctness. A normal state will
thus reveal parts that would otherwise remain unknown.
When a series of conscious states that constitute a process are
voluntarily brought into consciousness in the exact order in which

they normally occur, they re-function the anatomical structures and

physiological activities and psychophysical units
[page 319]
of the organism in which these states are embodied and by which
they are manifested. This sends more blood to those parts that are
functionally active, augments their metabolism and growth, and
increases the vividness of the conscious states. It also makes them
more definite and steady. Mental processes in an untrained mind
are invariably accompanied by adjunctive states and processes that
are not necessarily a part, but after being re-functioned these
useless concomitants are dropped and the process itself can be
introspected for the first time.
Quiescence turns down the lights in the chambers of the mind,
so that a dim object may be seen more easily, while re-functional
training makes the object itself more luminous. The result is a “re-
functionative.”
When a re-functionative is repeated, day by day for a short
period at a time, the process renders it automatic and finally results
in an “automotive,” that goes on quite largely of its own accord,
like walking, playing the musical scale, or repeating the alphabet.
It is then introspected. There is one special period in the
development of the automatic process when some of its states are
just beginning to become subconscious and automatic and a later
period when other states are becoming subconscious; and finally
only the main states are left. Now, at these periods during a
dominancy of quiescence the process is introspected while it is
automatically taking place and without being modified by the
introspective attention.
When I first began to apply the psychurgic art of discovering to
the study of introspection, I would not have believed that one of
the results would be the direct introspection of a process while it
was occurring. The mentative art led to the methods above, in the
order given, and until the last step was actually achieved the goal
seemed as far away as ever. All these successive steps were
necessary before the mind could take a “motion picture” of one of
its processes. But how many will have the patience to go through
so long and difficult a course of training! Fortunately only the
specialist in introspection will need to do so, and his predilection
will give a natural aptitude and bring time and
[page 320]
disposition to devote years to the task. It will amply repay the
effort, because along that line will be made the very greatest
discoveries, among which will be an entire new series of facts on
the great problems of Freedom and the relations of Consciousness

to the Cosmos. It is with automatics during a dominancy of

quiescence that true psychurgic introspection really begins; and it
may confidently be said that these methods inaugurate an era in
scientific psychology and therefore in science generally.
The Newest Introspection gives a still higher viewpoint. The
stream comes unbidden; internal and external stimuli interject their
characteristic states; a state is made of psychal parts; and
associative enregistration gives a cognitive meaning to a state. In
addition to these stream elements the introspector may cause a
purpose to enter, and like a commander it orders and directs the
states as if they were trained soldiers. Like a wizard it calls new
states into being; it joins selected states into an orderly or
interactional series or row of states constituting a “processive,” in
which each state by virtue of being in the process becomes a
“telurgid”—that is, tied to the others by another kind of telurgid
called desire, and directed by another called the idea of the end
(telos). On this desire-telos all the other states are strung like
pearls on a string, and this stringing modifies the states into
telurgids. These states are subsidiary telurgids except for the two
dominative telurgids called desire and telos; and these are a special
kind of psychal whole. A processive effects a causal synthesis of
otherwise merely orderly states, and in this way a whole lifetime
may become synthetic instead of disjunctive. This “telic unit,” this
processive, this purposive whole, causes the unbidden stream more
or less completely to vanish, and in its place arises a bidden
procession of states, lured by desire, directed toward the telos,
urged by intellectively adopted purpose.
A processive has apperceptively recognizable characters; it has
cognitive meaning as a whole, and so has each of its telurgids; but
we are now interested in a processive and its telurgids as
meaningless things. We may introspectively notice that some are
short and some are long; some are weak or strong, slow or
[page 321]
swift, good or bad; some are directed and some drift; some are
fulfilled in a moment of impulse and others require a lifetime of
endeavor for a telos lying beyond death. Accessory, concomitant,
and adjunctive states tend more and more to disappear as the telic
whole becomes more dominant. To the apperception the
processives are desires, ideas, musculations, seeings, hearings,
images, emotions, and other intellective and esthesic elements
connected by a plan. To introspection they are meaningless
psychal complexes tied together as a serial whole by two of the
psychal wholes, the telos and desire; and this telic whole is the
most conspicuous phenomenon of the Inner World. It is the
Pharaoh’s serpent that swallows all the others (if the person is

purposively efficient). Teleology, the science of purposing (from

teleo, “purpose,” and telos, “end”), and telurgy, its art, take their
rise in these discoveries; as does teleotaxurgy, the doing of one’s
classified purposes (teleotaxis).
In this Newest Introspection during a fully attained periodical
quiescence, the process of states (processive) is re-functioned, then
dirigated into greater dominancy and vividness. A more mutually
detailed natural history of cognitive states and processes is thus
made possible—as it were, a histology of states and a macroscopic
anatomy of processes.
When an automotive is dirigated, the result is a dirigative.
After skill in dirigating to bodily parts is attained, the dirigator
applies the method to the sensory nerve-endings, then to sensory
brain-centers, and finally to the functional sets of structures of the
higher mental processes. This augments the flow of blood to those
parts, increases metabolism and growth and functional activity and
renders the mental process more vivid and enduring. A state may
be temporarily inhibited from its customary rapid changes, and
even a very slight prolongation of some conscious states keeps
them under the introspective focus long enough to be noticed,
whereas ordinarily they would disappear too quickly to be caught
even by the seemingly instantaneous photography of the mind.
Another technique led to the most useful result of psychurgy.
[page 322]
Introspection of mentative dominancies takes place when a faculty
has been furnished the psychotaxic content of states and processes
belonging to a domain of knowledge and when (during a
quiescence of all other activities) the introspects of that kind of
activity have been selected, re-functioned, rendered automatic, and
dirigated; then they may be combined into a synthetic whole. The
whole system adapts itself to that kind of work; this one faculty
becomes habitually active with others recessive or non-active,
constituting a mentative dominancy—the most important, efficient,
and potent result of psychurgy. This dominancy may then be
introspected, and it reveals that faculty transfigured in all the
plenitude of its beauty and power. Such a dominancy is the secret
of genius; it holds the scepter of originality; it is the pioneer of
pioneers!
When all the dirigatives of a psychotaxic group or faculty are
functioned as a whole, the result is a “dominative.”
The Highest Introspection with its technique of single and
simultaneous processing, completed the bridge to the new
validation. A few writers talk about attempts to introspect a mental
process while it is taking place, but their records indicate they did
nothing more than recollect what had taken place after the process

had ceased. I reached a new viewpoint when I learned that

psychologists held that introspection was not merely useless but a
vicious method of studying the mind because it modifies the
process being introspected. I saw in this a momentous opportunity
for studying the effects of one process on another, the resultant
interaction of introspective and mental processes constituting a
third class of mental phenomena and a new kind of psychology—
an experimental introspection in which the effects of states and
processes upon each other are studied.
I knew that what had been called introspection was nothing
more than recollection, attention to the remembered experience,
and an apperceptive and logical analysis of it; so their opinion did
not much impress me. Besides, I had already trained myself in
these lines and did not read the German psychological books until
after I had entered the new domains. Attention to what
[page 323]
takes place in the mind in a naive and instinctive way, to be able to
tell in a superficial way what is most conspicuously going on, is
the Old Introspection—for instance, to know if one is thirsty or
hungry or sated, rested or active or tired; to know what images or
ideas are associatively suggested by a word; or to notice what kind
of activity is going on in the Outmost Region of the Inner World.
But the logical analysis and classification is simply apperception.
The Old Introspection consists in that act of voluntary attention by
which it is turned away from the Outer World and focused on the
Outmost Region of the Inner World to take notice of its most
superficial features. It does not differ much from an apperceptive
looking except that it is not by sensation or organesthesia that the
looking inward is done. It is not a looking at all; it is not a kind of
attention that is directed to sensory perception but is a more inward
kind relating to this Outmost Region. It is an introspective
perception (as understood by psychurgy). It is only from the
higher level of the psychurgic introspection that this explanation
could be made.
If the introspector can tell what things the mind is doing with
reference to its grosser forms of cognition, he can practice the Old
Introspection. If he can notice the same things as meaningless
wholes, he will have entered into the New Introspection. If he can
discriminate in a state its psychal parts, it will be a step in the
Newer Introspection. If he introspectively (not apperceptively) can
see the telic wholes, the Newest Introspection will be entered; and
if he can discriminate the mutual modification of states, he will
enter the Highest Introspection, the kind that finally provided the
bridge that led to the new validation and a new world of
Consciousness.

If attention is paid to any mental goings-on, there will be

correspondingly less paid to some other state or process, and this
requires nothing beyond apperceptive attention. But there is a very
important effect of attention on the state or process attended to: it
is thereby modified. If I pay attention to a pain, it becomes more
intense by a greater innervation and dirigation, but attention to an
emotion makes it less intense. These two
[page 324]
instances alone demonstrate that the effects of attention are not the
same; and I saw an opportunity to get a larger knowledge of states
and processes and a more technical knowledge of introspection and
apperception. By causing one cognitive state to act on another, by
making them arise in the mind simultaneously or alternately, I was
able to study the effect of one state on the activity and complexus
of another. I studied the effect of apperceptive attention and
introspective attention to a state or process, the effect of a state on
a process, and of a process on its component telurgids; and I
acquired a new kind of knowledge relating to psychal
modifications of states and processes. This was the inauguration
of Experimental Introspection, and its data gave rise to the new
science of Introdynamics, the dynamic effects of states and
processes on states and processes.
The stone that the builders had rejected became the chief
corner-stone of the temple.
On introdynamics is based intro-urgy, the art of introspecting,
one of the greatest of the psychurgic arts. It is in these domains
that I desire so much to do further work and research. Therein is
enough work for dozens of groups of investigators for several
centuries.
Not only did introspection modify the state introspected, in this
stage, but any conscious state whatever interacted with and
modified any other state that was simultaneously present in
consciousness. By knowing what effects a state had on another,
and what effects the introspective process had on a state or on an
intellective or an esthesic process, I was not misled by the Old or
Newer Introspections. This was a great step.
It is a fundamental law of introdynamics that three kinds of
modifications may happen to a cognitive state: (1) a modification
by which a state acquires a new or additional meaning to the
person in whom this occurs, due to apperception and
enregistration; (2) the state will become psychally more complex
because introspection will see that new component not as a
meaning but only as an additional psychal part; (3) that additional
psychal part, or any other psychal part, may undergo a

[page 325]
change in intensity of noticeable duration, and it is in this way that
an almost infinite number of wholes may be created, far more than
will ever be required by any creature as labels for its experiences.
The special technique of the Highest Introspection is difficult
to explain to anyone who has not practiced the new methods. The
introspective attention and the apperceptive attention are combined
in a simultaneous juxtaposition, so that the apperceptively known
states, while their meanings are in full focus, are introspected; and
so introspectively seen factors are appercepted. This accomplishes
an introanalysis of psychal parts of states in terms of their related
outer meanings, and the psychal elements of meanings are thereby
identified and classified, disclosing two kingdoms of psychal
wholes. The one relates to outer things and relations, and I have
called its units ectids; the other relates to inner things and relations,
and I have termed these entids. Furthermore, in both units there
are two kinds of component Psychal elements: those that are
determined by the characteristics of the Outer World, and to which
they correspond, I have called spects; and those that are deter-
mined by the characteristics of the Inner World, and to which they
correspond, which I have called cepts.
Entids and ectids relate to psychal wholes (states), while cepts
and spects relate to psychal elements of these wholes. One may
practice specting independently and notice the difference between
ectospects and entospects; or practice cepting alone and notice the
difference between ectocepts and entocepts.
There is outlined in these psychal facts and classification a new
descriptive science in which there are phenomena not taken into
account in the purely mechanical theory of science, because they
are not comprised in the Space-Time scheme. It is in these data
that cognitive validation begins; it is of a new kind and very
important.
Methods of validation hitherto known comprise inductive
observation and experimental research, congruity and consistence,
general averages and means, probability and testimony,
[page 326]
and the more recent pragmatism. Even as improved by psychurgy,
there is a grievous lack of certainty; not even one fact is known in
its own right and indubitably; it is known only in relation to other
facts, which in turn are known only in a relational way.
Psychotaxis was an important step, itself a new and efficient
method of validation and research, but it also led only to relative
knowledge.
The discovery of this Highest Introspection was an enormous
step toward a better validation. These Four Branches of

Introspection, as I have otherwise called it, consist in the

application of the three degrees (the memorial, the dreamlike, and
the phasmic degrees of vividness) of the new techniques of
introspection to an identification of the cepts and spects in the
mental content, and of the entic and ectic factors in them. Ceptive
and spective validation consists in identifying and making a
psychotaxis of them. Entoceptive and ectoceptive validation con-
sists in identifying the entic and ectic factors in each cept of the
ceptotaxis. Entospective and ectospective validation consists in
identifying the entic and ectic factors in each spect of the
spectotaxis. This is a fourfold new domain in scientific
psychology, and it is a vast and intricate one. Out of it has
developed a new study of conscious states; namely, the mutual
modification of cepts interacting with each other, and of spects
with each other; processes of cepts and of spects; the mutual
modification of entocepts and ectocepts and of entospects and
ectospects; and a psychotaxis and dominancy of each of these four
factors.
That part (cept) of a sensation or other intellective cognitive
unit that relates to the subjective world (is shaped by the process or
nature of Consciousness) is an entocept. The nature and mode of
activity of outward objects also impress something of their nature
on a related mental state, and this outwardly derived or objective
factor (cept) is an ectocept. Hence sensations and other intellective
units are resultants and components of objective and subjective
factors, the resultant occupying a space midway between the two
worlds and consisting in a blending of their
[page 327]
two natures, like the overlapping of two colors resulting in a hue
different from either.
All mental units of knowledge except cognostic data are made
up of such resultant entoceptive and ectoceptive factors. An item
of knowledge (spect) about a subjective thing is an entospect,
about an objective thing is an ectospect. Incorrect and incomplete
ectocepts (especially those in sensations and percepts) vitiate all
ectospects that arise out of them; and incomplete and incorrect
entocepts (especially those relating to the primary likenesses and
differences of conscious states and to introspects) vitiate all
entospects that arise out of them. In other words, the ectocept is
that factor (cept) in a unit of knowledge that comes from the
outside, and the entocept is that factor (cept) that comes from the
inside; but both are combined in every mental unit that gives a
“view” of the inside or outside. In any cognition a cept is that
factor that has been directly or immediately shaped by outward or
inward things; and these ceptive units are then combined into more

complex units that are items of knowledge about outward or

inward things called spects. A spect is a view, belief, percept,
concept, or image that the mind has of some thing in the objective
or the subjective world. The mind cannot know outward things by
ectocepts alone nor inward things by entocepts alone. A spect
always is composed of the two kinds of cepts.
Out of these facts relating to kinds of introspective cognitions
arise important methods of ascertaining and validating knowledge.
For instance, by the immediate introspective comparison of
entocepts and ectocepts with ectospects while the objective
“counterparts” of these ectospects are undergoing systematic
experimental variation and are being perceptually observed, the
ectospects may have their ceptive factors identified and corrected
and their inductive meanings validated. Conversely, by the
immediate introspective comparison of ectocepts and entocepts
with introspects while their subjective counterparts are being
introspectively watched, they may have their
[page 328]
ceptive factors identified and corrected and their inductive
meanings validated. Finally by cognosis the entoceptive content of
a spect may be standardized by an absolute criterion. In other
words, ectospects may be corrected by referring them to that part
of the outward nature thatimpresses itself on Consciousness as
ectocepts; and entocepts may be corrected by reference to that part
of the inward nature that impresses itself on Consciousness as
entocepts. Finally cognosis furnishes in itself the process and the
absolutely known data by which all cepts and spects may be
validated.
The ceptive factors in an intellection are those that have been
derived from the mind itself, owing to its nature and modes. The
spective factors are those that are due to the nature and modes of
objective things. Now, these objective things are probably known
not as they really are but as the mind perceives and understands
them; and the same is true of subjective things. Ceptive and
spective factors are concerned in the knowing of any objective
thing (by its corresponding ectid) and of any subjective thing (by
its corresponding entid). Thus entic ceptospection and ectic
spectoception result in an analysis of each intellection into its
cepts, spects, entids, and ectids, thus establishing guideposts
through the Inner Realm by which its data are validated; and
besides, they are important data in and of themselves. It is
important also to determine clearly the ceptive and spective factors
of our knowledge of the esthesias and conations.
What observation is to the Outer World, introspection is to the
Inner World. just as psychurgic observation and experiment lead to

a better knowledge of objective things, so the New Introspection

leads to a more exact and extensive knowledge of subjective
things. It identifies the subjectively and objectively derived factors
of experience more definitely, distinguishes them carefully from
integrative elaborations, and recognizes those domains in the
subjective world that correspond to scientific realms in the
objective world. The mind is no longer left in doubt regarding the
reality of the volitional and non-volitional, or the subjective and
objective, kinds of experience.
[page 329]
The first epistemological law of validation is this: the
smuggling of a spect into an entid when it does not belong there
and its interpretative acceptance as belonging, and the smuggling
of a cept into an ectid and its interpretative acceptance, are the
fundamental errors and illusions of cognition; and no real
validation of any kind is possible until these are eliminated. The
direct demonstration of cepts in man’s knowledge of Outer Things
and of spects in his knowledge of Inner Things has a profound
significance in epistemology: it conclusively refutes dualism and
monistic idealism and psychophysical parallelism.
The fundamental modes of communicative exposition and
cognistic mentation are rendered quite largely non-valid because
everything that has been named, as image, concept, or idea,
contains factors of such different values (entic, ectic, ceptive,
spective) that almost any predicate that may be used with the name
of a thing will not apply equally, nor in the same sense, to each one
of these four factors. True validation cannot be applied to any
statement whatever until these four factors have been identified in
each term of a sentence. Do you see this? If you do, you will
understand that a whole new method and system of validation has
been discovered.
Introspective validation is a new kind of scientific method.
Old methods made no attempt to get from the mental states out of
which inductive premises came any credentials as to their
normality and truthfulness. Introtechnics has discovered how to
rectify the mental states themselves. Hence human testimony as
introspects becomes scientific evidence. I have calculated that
fully 90 percent of the usual errors in the inductive method and its
inductions can be avoided by this fourfold rectification of the
prelogical mental states. All states need this—even sensations, and
the whole range of intellections. Among the most formidable are
the useless adjunctive states; hence we must inquire into the
validity of these mental states as states before they begin their life
in logic.

These introspective methods culminate in an awareness-

introspection, which is an introspection of the introspects; that is,
[page 330]
it is an introspection of the introspective process and states. This is
not cognosis, and it is clearly differentiated from the Newest
Introspection. After a series of introspective memories have been
enregistered as an introtaxis, they may be awared, and while a
dirigated introspected process is being carried on we can become
aware of that introspective Consciousness; and this is a new kind
of introspection.
All this introspective validation needs to be studied and tested
and every step repeated many times by competent investigators.
The day is gone when the authority of an individual is sufficient to
establish a fact scientifically. Human testimony alone cannot
establish a scientific datum.
So Elmer Gates closes his account of introtechnics.
It will be remembered that as an outgrowth of his youthful

skepticism, Gates felt the need to discover validation to be a
religious as well as a scientific necessity. From various
considerations of his later work he was urged toward what he
considered the most important technical problems of psychurgy:
validating intellections to sift truth from error; evaluating esthesias
to choose good from bad; and testing conations to select the
useful—all these called collectively, alethification. His progress
placed the subject on a scientific basis. The four branches of the
Highest Introspection completed the bridge to validation, but the
bridge had yet to be crossed and the new territory explored by
further experience in studying Consciousness, or rather in
observing Consciousness studying itself. From his point of view
Consciousness may be considered to be a cosmic phenomenon
having its essential characteristics and nature, just as electricity
has; and when Consciousness occurs in any organism, the mind of
that creature is built by enregistering, remembering, and
associatively integrating these conscious states.
Regardless of the old speculations about consciousness or the
tendency of many scientists now to avoid even using the term,
Gates knew that he was conscious and was aware that he knew
[page 331]
it. Some modern philosophers of science have labeled the quest
for certainty a speculative waste of time, and by old methods this
may well be true, but to Elmer Gates the whole nature of Mind
demanded it. Is there one fact for certain? he wondered. The
unique and totally indefinable experience that Consciousness has

in simply being conscious is such a fact that Consciousness cannot

doubt. It is the first, the simplest, the primordial and fundamental
experience, the beginning of all other experience—not the
experience that the mentator has with Consciousness, but the
experience that Consciousness has with itself. But Consciousness
also detects differences in consciousness, else there would be no
further experience; it discovers that changes take place in
consciousness, that it has different kinds of conscious states: that
they succeed each other, that a previously experienced conscious
state can be reproduced, that there are likenesses between states,
and so on. In brief, the first fact or datum is Consciousness
experiencing itself, and consciousing is the process by which it
knows more about itself.
Consciousness by its own activities progresses from the first
experience to a full knowledge about all its subjective states, and
inventories can be made of them. (Gates entitled one of his
expositions, “About the 2300 Groups of Facts Relating to
Consciousness.”) Through its volitional states, as detected in the
volitional factor of conation and the conscious factor of volition,
Consciousness discovers that some are voluntarily reproducible;
that of the involuntary states some relate to the body and others do
not. Those which do not are outside the body and independent of
volition, and have come to be known as the not-self states, or
objective phenomena, as contrasted with the self-states, or
subjective phenomena. Thus Consciousness by experience with
itself bridges the supposed chasm between subjective and
objective. At no point from first datum to last generalization of
true science is there a break in the conscious continuity of the
indubitable and inductive certainty of the knowledge acquired.
The criterion is present at every step of the process of consciousing
by
[page 332]
which Consciousness “introspectively” becomes acquainted with
its own “subjective world” and by which, through sensory stimuli,
it gets a knowledge of its organism and other objective things.
In experimental introspection the experimenter will not only
know he is conscious when he is conscious of a state but be able to
introspect that knowing as a process of conscious states, each
having certain discriminable qualitative differences and intensity-
differences and duration-differences and clusterings and
sequences. All states will have a psychal effect upon each other,
and entirely apart from their cognitive meanings and their
inductive or logical relations, the experimenter will know, with a
greater certainty than he can know anything else whatever, that

when he is conscious he is actually conscious of a psychal state

and its changes. So Gates emphatically described his experience.
When images of actual objects are before consciousness, those
that are alike are grouped together, and the likenessing process is
really an inability to detect a difference between two or more
images (though a further study of the object with better methods of
observation may show a difference). If Consciousness could not
detect differences between its states, it would never have more
than one state. One does not need to know what Consciousness is
in order to know that it is, any more than Faraday needed to know
what electricity is in order to find out what it will do. How
Consciousness can be we know not, but that it actually is we know
indubitably; when awake and aware, we know we are awake and
aware. When we are conscious that our feet are warm, there is
something else happening than just knowing this fact; namely, we
know that consciousness is taking place, and we know it has
certain different qualitative states and that changes take place in
consciousness, that these states have their durations and intensities
and clusterings and successions, entirely apart from their cognitive
meanings. When Consciousness becomes conscious of
consciousness, it knows those things absolutely and not relatively;
and all this is a higher and more
[page 333]
fundamental validation than induction or introspective rectification
of mental states.
Form a mental image out in space of a magnetized piece of
steel and near it place a copper wire in a closed loop. No
electricity is anywhere in the vicinity. Move the wire through the
magnetic field, and immediately a current of electricity flows in
the wire, and while it flows the whole nature of electricity will be
there, and it will act according to its nature. So when
consciousness arises in a conscious state, the whole nature of
Consciousness will be there acting out its nature, creating
enregistrations in the psychophysical complexus in which it
occurs. If Consciousness could not detect differences in its states,
we could not be conscious at all, and knowledge and experience
could never start. The detection of a difference in consciousness is
the basic and prelogical induction, and the detection of a likeness is
the basic deduction, which gives a criterion of truth applicable
even to submental matters. Hence conceptuation has for its basic
process of classification an infallible criterion and highest
authority.
A state comprises four things in natural history: an objective
thing; a subjective mental state; a brain-enregistration; and a name
for the concept of that state and thing. By means of these four

mental things the Cosmos becomes functionally operative in the

life of the person.
Roger Babson asked Steinmetz, “What line of research will see
the greatest development during the next fifty years?” Steinmetz
replied: “I think the greatest discovery will be made along spiritual
lines. Here is a force which history clearly teaches has been the
greatest power in the development of man. Yet we have been
merely playing with it and never seriously studying it as we have
physical forces.
“Some day people will learn that material things do not bring
happiness and are of little use in making men and women creative
and powerful. Then scientists will turn their laboratories over to
the study of God and prayer and the spiritual forces which as yet
have hardly been scratched. When this day comes,
[page 334]
the world will see more advancement in one generation than it has
in the last four." (C. D. Wagoner, "Steinmetz Revisted," General
Electric Review, July 1957.)
“Whitman says the more he sees of the shows of the world, the
older his experience, the more sure he feels that the real something
is yet to be known. So feel I," wrote Elmer Gates in 1906.

[page 335]
CHAPTER 16
A Cosmos of Consciousness
This of all subjects has interested me most. In this inner

laboratory of my own mind I have done my most difficult
experimenting, my most extensive and elaborate lines of research;
and it is in this domain of my own consciousness that I have
discovered a new continent and brought the first scientific report.
—ELMER GATES
The feeling and intuition that a great new mental domain

awaits discovery often appears in the writings of Elmer Gates: “A
whole new and unexpected world,” he wrote in 1899; “pupils
should make a prospection of it, try for it. Surely the greatest hope
and expectancy for the future lies in the mind’s domain. Someone
will find a leading and discover something that will amaze and
transform the world; it will not be spiritism or telepathy or such for
that leaves the mind’s mystery mainly unexplored. It will relate to
the mind’s introspective processes in some way and their relation
to ontology and epistemology.”
“The one dominant impulse and intuition and overmastering
desire of my life,” he wrote a year later, “is to discover some great
law relating to the mind’s action. I feel that, like the man who
could not see the forest for the trees, I cannot see this
[page 336]
discovery because it is so near to me or my consciousness—so
self-evident, so immediately practicable.”
Early in his studies he decided that the one great subject was
mind. Though the whole of modern science since Thales has
studied environment, including bodily organs and minds as
objective parts, Gates made clear that the best way to prepare for
the study of environment was to study the mind, which was a
domain of its own. By 1900 he saw clearly that in the study of
environment and mind the central problem was Consciousness.
How to handle Consciousness was the question.
“First and foremost is health, sanity, superabundant energy,
oxygen, unaltered circulation, recuperation, rest, sleep, normal
activity—else Consciousness cannot be vigorous and clear. What
else? Imagine me saying O I wish I had some consciousness upon
which to experiment. Naught else is so surely and completely
mine as my own Consciousness, it is I. I can observe the effects of
conscious states in other things, but only in my own Consciousness
can I directly and immediately know what Consciousness is and

experiment on it and with it. This is experimental introspection

which reveals a hitherto unknown continent in the world of mind.
The first thing I knew was a conscious state, and I have since
known naught else. But though it is my consciousness, it is
nevertheless a cosmic process. I do not make the nature of my
consciousness any more than gravity or truth. Consciousness has
discovered truth about itself and the not-self. What is the law of
that discovery? It is experience, but what is that? Surely it is a
consciousness of Consciousness because only Consciousness can
have experience, only it can get knowledge.
“There are phenomena in the objective world that
Consciousness cannot predict or know except by experience;
therefore Consciousness must learn about the objective world
inductively,” he concluded. He acquired a new point of view, as
yet indefinable. He practiced the consciousing of consciousness
and the awaring of introspection hoping to discriminate some new
domain in his consciousness, which must be influenced by the
[page 337]
Consciousness of the Cosmic whole. Could he discriminate the
subjective connection?
“The nature of the world is fixed and includes Consciousness.”
But by voluntary effort Gates found that he could increase the
power of consciousness and extend his knowledge of self and not-
self. This was the great marvel of Consciousness—“its power to
be self-active; its power to will!” He achieved a new view of the
relation of Consciousness to itself: it can exercise control over its
own states. It is self-active and can call into action or accept such
states as it chooses and can inhibit others. Inhibiting the bad and
re-functioning the good states in each domain of intellection,
emotion, and conation, he believed, would soon re-create his
consciousness.
“It is not only mind that makes every discovery, but it is
Consciousness—the power of becoming conscious, of detecting
new discriminations in states of consciousness. Undoubtedly the
most important thing to be done by Consciousness for itself is the
elimination of undesirable emotional states and false intellectual
data. In studying Consciousness it is always necessary to
remember that every act whereby Consciousness becomes
conscious of itself is a voluntary act. We cannot separate
intellection, emotion, and conation; and one of the most
fundamental factors of conation is directing the attention. It
follows that an introspective study of Consciousness involves the
volitional factor to such an extent that the result of the
introspection will be modified by the nature of the effort. It is
impossible to separate a single introspection of a conscious state

from the voluntary effort made in directing the awareness to that

state. Perhaps I was on the right track to discover some great
things about Consciousness when experimenting with the psychal
factor of volition.
“As far as my reading goes, I find that no one has ever tried to
introspect the nature of Consciousness itself. They have
introspected certain differentiated conscious states, such as
sensations and pains, fatigue, images and certain mental processes.
Now if I could divert this introspective domain from a study of
some
[page 338]
special state and direct it to a study of Consciousness itself as
modified by physical and environmental conditions, and by
psychal conditions, it may be that I can learn something new about
Consciousness itself. If from the content of Consciousness I
cancel its specific qualitative states, does there remain a plenum or
sub-stratum of Consciousness out of which the different states
have arisen? Will the introspection of Consciousness itself
augment its activity? . . . It is very difficult to introspect
Consciousness; the results are misty and indistinct. Only by
frequent practice can I become aware of the introspective
Consciousness. . ..
“The fundamental interaction of self and not-self is the sole
condition of Consciousness. Mind is fundamentally social (as
representing communion between self and not-self): even the first
sensation is a product of this fundamental interaction between
Cosmos as a whole and myself as a finite part. Mind in its very
nature is an adjustment between a finite organism and its
environment.”
Such were some of his points of view expressed in diary entries
of 1900. In 1903 his five attempts at business mentation brought
results relating to Consciousness and pointed to a great discovery.
He had frequent practice: in 1904 he wrote that every day during
the past ten years two or more morning hours were devoted to a
systematic study of the science of Consciousness (cognostology),
“looking” for more facts, classifying and generalizing. He also
carried on systematic practice of the corresponding art of
consciousing (cognosing), by which Consciousness studies and
inventories its own states and processes, its normal nature and
activities, and attains skill, thereby increasing its vividness and
power, augmenting directly or indirectly the basic energies of life
and mind.
“Next to discovering a truth is to point out its need and the way
to find it. Not on inspiration or genius need we depend for these
discoveries, but on an art of conceptuating, ideating, and

thinking.” So Gates wrote, and so he did. The heurotechnic

method was further applied to an experimental study of the
[page 339]
nature of knowledge. Out of the foregoing steps and a number of
others, and much further experience with the arts of inventing and
discovery, and especially out of the Four Branches of Introspection
and the art of validation, came a notable subjective effect upon his
whole being, an exalted rapture of expectation and an intense
desire and leading to become acquainted with a more sure and
certain kind of knowledge.
“My attention was completely and dominantly centered on this
subject,” he wrote later about it in 1911, “and I felt a new step
coming. But I was not walking around in a dreaming ecstasy; I
was busy fourteen hours a day, five of them (my best early
morning) being spent in my subjective laboratory and the others in
my objective laboratory. This laboratory in my inner world was
irresistibly attractive. To the world studied by this inner laboratory
there are Three Gates: the New, Newer, and Newest Introspection.
The First Gates admit into The Realm, the Second to its Capital
City, the Third to the Court. In each there are Towers of
Observation (the memorial, the dreamlike, the phasmic degrees of
vividness), and from each one of these nine Towers four kinds of
phenomena may be studied-the ceptive, spective, entic, and ectic.
From the highest Tower of the Court I studied entic cepts and in
the entic factor of cepts I beheld the Dawn of The New Cycle.
And in that supreme moment I was a thousand times repaid for
every sacrifice and effort during the twenty well-filled years since
my twelfth. I knew from that moment on all the rest of my life
would be devoted to the study of mind and environment from the
cognostic standpoint and by cognostically rectified methods. Does
this sound mystical? It is not. Though the names sound
allegorical, they are simply convenient terms for actual mental
faculties and processes and methods. There is not anything
whatever that is as directly and immediately known as cognosis.
The first great result from this line of research was the discovery of
cognosis; the second was the discovery of a criterion of truth; the
third was the discovery of the cognostic rectification of cognistic
validation called alethification.”
[page 340]
As Gates became sufficiently skilled in ceptive introspection he
knew that something of a non-mental character was going on in a
cept besides volitional activities—different from his instinctive and
phylogenetic subconsciousness—and that such a self activity was

not a mental activity. After canceling meanings and educing it to

become dominant, he knew it to be something more than a cept.
As a cept it was a unit factor in his mental life; as a non-mental
self-activity by which it maintained itself as a cept it was a
cognocept. By watching that self-activity, by “initiating” that
“spontaneity,” he became aware of an ability to exert a directive
action on it—not by volition, but by educing it to follow certain
lines of activity.
“This non-mental factor or cept is always the same for a given
interaction with, or stimulus from, the environment, subjective or
objective; and is thus a criterion of truth. The cept is always what
it seems to be and represents that specific interaction or relation or
stimulus (sensation) between the given objective or subjective
thing, and nothing else whatever,” he was certain; and he
continued, “There is immanent in the mind a Consciousness per se
that is not individualistic but an active process of consciousing,
alike in all minds, self-active, the ceptive base of every mental
state.”
It takes a long time to get acquainted with a new capacity or
mental power and utilize it knowingly. Cognosis was gradually
disclosed to him from 1891 to 1899 and subsequently to 1911. It
was fifteen years after he actually began to experience it before he
was able to distinguish it from his new methods of introspection,
and still another dozen years before he could use it as a whole. By
long practice and growth and favorable periods and insights the
Awareness entered more and more into his introspection and
became a part long before he could identify or use it separately.
More and more it became a witness, and one day while “awaring”
a cept (divested of its meanings) he knew “indubitably that the ens
of the cept was a bit of the cosmically-immanent Consciousness
per se and its urgings was its self-activity.” Thus Consciousness
reveals to itself its own nature and
[page 341]
moods, the data of which axe absolutely known criteria of truth,
constituting the basis of a new and more fundamental
epistemology.
“A cept is a window opening into the new Cosmos of
Consciousness!”
From the new standpoint the law of cognition is that a cept is a
bit of Consciousness per se, while a spect is an interpretation of
that cept by having been associatively enregistered with some
characteristic feature or act of experience. That is, meanings are
due to spects, while cepts have no cognitive meanings. The act or
process of apperceptive interpretation enregisters a qualitative cept
(feeling, sensation) with some other qualitative cept (musculation,

feeling, motor act), thereby creating a more complex unit called a

spect, which is a cognitive state. A state, whether about an outer or
inner thing, has cepts in it, few or many, but the spect is due
quantitatively to a combination of ceptive units.
By causing Consciousness to become conscious of itself and
with its own states (not one of which is any of the usual and
hitherto known mental states), a new group of facts are identified,
constituting a new science. All these facts are known absolutely
and indubitably, and not relatively, giving a series of standard data
that actually are just what they seem to be. These facts constitute a
criterion of truth; and the mode of knowing by which they were
discovered, cognosis, is more fundamental than the logical modes
and psycho-logic processes of perceptual observation, induction, or
deduction, and is corrective of the errors in them. Not one of these
facts of cognostic data is derived from sensory perception or
induction or deduction or from any traces of reasoning whatever
but are true even if the whole other content of the mind be untrue.
This is a new basis for science and a new foundation for
philosophy, and gives to science verified by the only criterion
known to man a deeply religious significance. By aid of this
criterion and the mode of knowing upon which it is based, we get
in under perception and all modes of cognition and cognitive
inference, rectifying them to give rise to cognostically rectified
methods of cognitive validation. It gets in
[page 342]
behind and antecedent to esthesias and thus evaluates them. It gets
in behind all cognitive self-activity and thus enables the selection
and test of urgations (Gates’ collective term for different kinds of
volitional effort, of which conation is the simplest) All this
intellective and introspective validation, esthesic evaluation, and
urgative testing is called alethification—the art of determining the
true, good, and useful in mental states and processes.
All this domain of cognosis has been wrongly identified with
the instinctive and subconscious processes; it has been so close to
the mind that it has been used unawares. Indeed, Consciousness is
frequently defined as being merely the general name for all
conscious states, as if each did not contain the particular factor of
Consciousness. Consciousness has an inherent nature of its own; it
is a property over whose nature the individual has no control; it is
cosmic in origin. It arises in an organism when the conditions are
right, and the whole nature of Consciousness is then and there
manifested; it is at the same time the power that introspects and is
introspected. Consciousness is the most significant and important
factor in life and mind, and to know its nature and laws is the
fundamentally useful knowledge.

To use this power of cognosis intentionally we must know

where it ends and intellection begins, how cognostic activity
furnishes data for voluntary attention and volition and how self-
initiated bodily movement brings the establishment of adaptive
relations between inward processes and states and outward
conditions, resulting in interpretations of an experiential character
and thus carrying the natural validity of cognosis into intellection
and rectifying it. Cognosis does not relate itself directly to the
adaptive experience of the individual, but it is the process that
furnishes the first premises for them; it begets our knowledge of
sensations and is the basis of reasoning.
The reasoning process commences at the very beginning of
cognition in the formation of the simplest and lowest intellection.
When the self first relates muscular motion to sensation, it infers
that its self is making the bodily motions, and this inference is an
[page 343]
inductive step by virtue of that same kind of process as all
reasoning processes—by remembering the results of discriminated
conscious experience. Thus when a conscious volition of a certain
subjective character produces a certain movement of bodily parts,
the self remembers that such conscious states produce such
motions, and then repeats them with that end in view. The
fundamental nature of inductive reasoning is discriminating a
conscious experience by detecting a difference in Consciousness,
and that of deductive reasoning is remembering an induction and
detecting its likeness as compared with some other experience.
Induction consists in detecting a difference, deduction in detecting
a likeness; this is the solution of the hitherto inexplicable mystery
of reason.
“One of the supremest moments of my life,” Gates recollected,
“was when this insight first came. I was seeking, O so eagerly, an
understanding of the nature of reason and its taxonomic place in
the scheme of intellective integrants. I had been reading logic
from Aristotle to Mill and Spencer to the last magazine article. I
had many times introspected every step of my intellective process.
When I saw the nature of the ratiocinative process in all its
profound and fundamental simplicity, and at the same time saw a
still more fundamental basis for my analysis, I felt that my life had
not been in vain; my joy in the realization of the truth of my work
was my deepest satisfaction.
“What is this insight? If the self at any given step of its
development, in which it has a certain number of conscious states,
could never discover in the totality of its subjective states any new
conscious state, any differences or differentiations in the stream of
Consciousness, then further mental development would be

impossible. A new conscious state must arise by the mind’s

discovering or detecting a difference between its present states and
a new state just experienced. I do not think a multiplication of
remarks will make the point any plainer. If the self could not
distinguish differences there would be but one conscious state
which would be psychally impossible; a conscious state can exist
only as a relation or relatedness to other states.
[page 344]
“The next process is remembering that experience. The
creation of an enregistration in the bodily structure and the re-
functioning of it constitutes the memory of that experience. The
self finds it can repeat that previously discovered state by
subjectively repeating that process by which it was first produced,
and that is deduction. Similar self-active conscious states produce
similar results in Consciousness. In making this discovery the
mind detects likenesses between one group of conscious states and
another group. To detect a likeness is to classify. At the very
beginning of intellection the mind, by its nature, commences to
make a taxonomy of its subjective states and tries to make it
conform to perceivable objective conditions.
“The cosmic Consciousness immanent in a creature responds to
its interactions with its environment in such a way that when a
certain kind occurs a consciousness-state of a certain quality arises
in the creature. As this state invariably occurs with that interaction
it becomes the sign of that objective thing to that creature, and the
two are associatively integrated in memory constituting a cognitive
state. But the same quality of Consciousness-state to another
creature or on another world might be associated with a totally
different kind of objective thing. For example, to a creature in a
pond a given object may cause the sensation of red, and if that
object is used as a food, that sensation will mean something good
to eat; to another however, of a different degree of evolution or on
another planet, that same sensation may mean something noxious.
Now divested of its cognistic meaning this state will be the same in
kind to each one of a dozen creatures however widely its meaning
may differ. The meanings are cognistic, but the consciousness
element which constitutes the sensation of red apart from its
meaning, is Consciousness per se. If a moment of Consciousness
per se did not arise in response to the stimulus from the object, the
creature could not be aware of the object. According to the special
experience of each creature, that Consciousness state comes to
have a quite special meaning: it is individualistic, local, temporal,
relative while the Consciousness state per se is non-individualistic
(the same in different

[page 345]
creatures), universal, absolute. All the experiences of a given
creature in a given environment are primarily pure Consciousness
states but when interpreted they are cognitive states and their
enregistration as memory-structures and mental content builds the
cognitive mind, which is local and temporal (necessarily so for
adaptive value in an evolving creature).
“Grasp this interpretative, local, and temporal nature of
cognition and you will not wonder that the eternal verities cannot
reveal themselves through cognition; you will not wonder that ten
thousand theories have clouded the sky of human intellect, filled it
with storms and wrecked it with cyclones. You win cease to look
for finalities in cognition; you will know that its very nature lies in
its complete localness and temporalness and individual
adaptiveness (specificalness).”
So Gates vehemently wrote.
This discovery of the true nature of cognition, the
demonstration of the genesis and nature of meaning and volition,
he considered among the “greatest glories of the heurotechnic
method; all made possible by the discovery of cognosis.”
Heurotechny discovered the New Introspection and created the
new science of introspectology, and with them discovered the
fourfold validation as a new domain in scientific method that led to
the discovery of cognosis and prelogic. This phase of Gates’ work
was not made public and was seldom talked about, except to a few
of his closest associates. “Had I done as most discoverers,” he
answered a friend’s complaint about not writing out this discovery,
“I would have stopped with the first step and spent the rest of my
life writing about it. I saw so many further wonders opening before
my enraptured vision that I had not the time to develop and publish
that one step.”
There were hours and days in his early life when he yearned
inexpressibly for just that kind of knowledge, never actually daring
to believe he could get it. “Nevertheless I never stopped the
yearning, never ceased seeking,” he wrote. “When I found it, it
was so big I could see only a small part of its vast scope, like a
man trying to see the earth from where he stands. Gradually
[page 346]
I became aware of the magnitude of what I cognosed and now it
fills my horizon. O how my heart goes back to those dear old days
when I made my transition from the pre-psychurgic cycle of
human development into the New Cycle—when Consciousness
cognosed itself and cognition was seen from a higher Level! It
was a great day for me when I definitely knew and knew
indubitably that Consciousness is the fundamental certainty—and

the very greatest reality of Existence. I thought it over and over

and realized that without organic feelings and sensations I could
not possibly have known of the existence of anything, but the
fundamental factor is the Consciousness that constitutes them. It is
the most fundamental fact that it may ever know, prior to all doubt.
I had at last escaped from doubt by discovering the indubitable and
fundamental and uninterpreted nature of Consciousness....
“That concealed within the known Cosmos there should be
another hitherto totally unknown cosmos was a surprise.
Psychurgy was the Columbus of a new cosmos. It identified
within the known physico-chemical cosmos another and vastly
more complex cosmos, their synthesis constituting one psycho-
physical complexus of inconceivable complexity. In every
cognitive mental state was found, like a jewel in its matrix, a
Consciousness-state (cept) through which my Consciousness could
peep into the Cosmos of Consciousness,” he marveled.
“This Cognocosmos is the immanently directive organizer of
the picture and the screen and the beholder. A new human faculty
had to be born. It cannot be detected by the senses, nor
intellectively perceived nor discovered by exploration with a
telescope or microscope, nor by induction or deduction, nor by
physical laboratory experiments, nor even by introspection. But
ceptive introspection is the perilously dizzy path that leads to the
Heights from which the new faculty may look through a rift in the
cognitive clouds and discover a new and far more sublime cosmos
than has ever exalted the mind of man. If the human race had
always been without eyes, imagine the extent to which its
cognitive world would expand with sight! They have been
[page 347]
cognostically blind, but with the advent of cognosis the thick veil
of opaque cognition has become transparent and sometimes it is
wholly lifted for a few brief seconds, disclosing a new and
almighty and impersonal Cosmos of ineffable beauty, majesty, and
of infinite power, a whole new cosmos revealed! The wonder of
this startling assertion is this—each successful cognostic pupil
finds it to be true!”
The advent of cognosis is the rise of a new power in the human
mind, and it marks the beginning of the psychurgic era by
disclosing the disparate difference between cognition and cognosis
and disclosing the local, temporal, and purely interpretative nature
of cognition. Cognosis is ultracognitive. In cognosis we attain a
new relationship to the Cosmos and a new and higher mode of
religious insight and experience. There are certain things that we
can indubitably know, namely cognocepts, and in them we have a
criterion of truth and absolute proof of the mind’s sanity and a

contact with the infinitely immanent and transcendent in the

Cosmos; and then through cognition, with its sensations and
organized feelings and introspection and its intellective integration,
we arrive at a knowledge of the Outer World-merging from the
absolute certainty of cognosis into the relative inductive certainty
of cognition.
Out of this knowledge comes also identification of the
cognistic self and discovery of a Cognostic Self. By cognisis
(cognition), Consciousness evolves for each species in interaction
with its mechanical and social environment a mind adapted to
those creatures for that environment, and at the same time in
interaction with the Cognocosmos there is ripening in each
individual a Cognostic Self that is an adaptation to the universal
and eternal conditions of the Cognocosmos; and in some
individuals a cognistic apprehension of that Real Self may occur
and voluntary use be made of that knowledge.
“To see and know the ‘content’ of a cept as a self-activity
independent of one’s volition (wonderful!),” exclaimed Gates, “is
to meet your own Real or Cognostic Self—the impersonal,
universal, and perhaps eternal Self. As an activity it is able to
[page 348]
direct the motions of the atoms constituting its brain substance and
rorganize it structurally and make enregistrations as mental
memories. Consciousness is the brain builder. Being self-active, it
is a self, for a mere mechanical motion is not self action. It is the
real self, all else in man is an automaton. It is the Higher Self. As
cognosis is the basis of cepts, the mind is of the nature of cognosis.
The individual self acquires additional and a higher kind of self-
expression. In cognosis is a true self-activity, the basic self-
reliance.”
It has been noted that in his steps in introspection what Gates
called the Awareness played an increasing part and finally became
a witness. He recorded early that consciousness is not a single
phenomenon but a dual performance. Consciousness consciousing
itself implies two consciousnesses—a dual perception of the same
mental state in the same organ, in his brain and in a cosmic
Consciousness. “O give me to sing this solid, simple, plainly
understood truth; it is more wonderful than all mysticism,” he
wrote with youthful ardor.
He learned to discriminate introspection—which varied, from
Awareness—which did not vary. Awareness is that which pays
attention to and witnesses the whole conscious content of the mind.
He warned “the truth-loving reader against any attempt at an occult
or mystical interpretation of this most interesting and wonderful

phenomenon. It is a natural and not supernatural condition, as all

my experiments prove; it is cosmic and not supracosmic.”
The following entries in his diaries of 1899-1904 show
progress in his study of cognosis and Awareness, and the
beginning of his knowledge of how to utilize Awareness.
(Adapted.)
I am a differentiated part of the Cosmic Mind. If I am not, then

my mind came without adequate cause. I watch the Cosmic Mind
process every day in my own Consciousness. I am amazed to find
it has a nature of its own, and I understand how that nature could
not have been different without impossible things being possible.
Thus my mind knows (introspects) that there is
[page 349]
no limit to Space; that a body cannot travel from one place to
another in a straight line and skip half the distance—that is, my
mind is aware that it could not do so. Consciousness is aware of
itself, that half is less than the whole. It not only knows these
statements to be true but is fully and authoritatively aware that they
could have been true in no other way, with an absolute knowing
with which the ordinary certainties of inductive science are not
comparable. Scientific data are matters of experience, and we do
not know but what the facts might just as well have been different.
The Awareness of Consciousness knows not only that a fact is true
as a matter of experience but also that it could not possibly have
been different. This Awareness that knows essential truth is not
introspection, and when I cognitively understand why, then I
realize that Awareness is the expression of the ontological nature
of the universe.
In trying to become aware of our conscious introspects we
must not try to image that which is by its very nature not
imageable—for example, Space. When we try to get the mind’s
affirmations about space, we are apt to project imaginary lines in
various directions and to picture it as a sphere. And such images
are not attributes of space but steps in the method by which we
arrive at a true awareness of it.
How the mind has this strange capacity to be cognizant of this
dual Consciousness—to be a witness to its own states and acts, and
to its introspection of them, and to the critical approvals and
disapprovals, and at the same time to be cognizant of truth—is one
of the amazing mysteries. . . . To my Awareness I am as objective
as a tree, to my mind Consciousness is as cosmic as chemistry or
gravity; between Awareness and Consciousness is the mind, built
by Consciousness and viewed by Awareness.

In cognostics I have enregistered as mind-units data relating to

the experience of Consciousness with itself that are new to the
human race. Awareness is clearly a synthetic consciousness
combining mental states and introspects of them into one whole
that includes in one externalized way self and not-self; it is a
composite
[page 350]
state that integrates perception and introspective experience. But
all these states are produced by a property of existence more
fundamental—Consciousness. By means of volitionally paying
attention to the factors of a mental state I notice that there is a more
fundamental conscious state that Awareness has hitherto included,
and then I observe that Consciousness notes its experiences with
itself. Awareness touches the synthetic oneness of all cosmic
units; Consciousness touches the immanent life of them all. By
making Consciousness get a new conscious state about itself so
that I remember it, I will enregister a series of memories new to the
human race, and out of that new mental content may arise the
power I seek—the power to read more of the book of
Consciousness.
This power to look down upon and into yourself by the
Awareness is the most impressive, immense, and awful event in
the world. The Awareness simply witnesses—it does not even
judge, it neither approves nor disapproves. It simply knows; it is
aware of all that takes place in your mind, of the false and the true.
Cognosis knows the cognitive content by being aware of it through
cepts; the bridge to cognition is the Awareness. Cognition through
entic introspection of the cepts becomes aware of the Cognosis of
the individual; its bridge to cognosis is Awareness. The
Awareness is witness to both these interacting worlds, between the
subjective and innermost somewhat as sensation is the bridge
between the subjective and objective. Now the immanent is in
both. It has self-active and effective causal relations with both.
The subconscious is phylogenetic, ancestral, suggestible—can be
set to a good as well as to a bad task. It is to the superconscious, or
Awareness, that high guidance comes when guided by knowledge,
justice, love.
How marvelous that we carry with us every moment a witness
that remembers every motive and secret wish and thought and act
and yet does not in any way prohibit these unless trained and asked
to do so! This training, and even the idea of it, is my discovery
and contribution to morals and ethics. It requires an associative
enregistration of the Awareness memory with the

[page 351]
memory of each motive and desire until the related memory
content of the mind has a greater number of awareness associations
with it than without.
When once the psychurgist discovers that mental processes are
cosmic, that the mind is cosmic, that he asks of it and it performs,
that it contains that which is immanent and universal, he will
realize in his own Awareness his connection with The All, and in
his introspective Consciousness will realize his identity with the
Cosmic Psychal Process. I know this, and I know others can be led
to know it. Surely there can be no more positive religious force
than the direct knowledge of the immanent presence in your own
consciousness of that-which-is-at-the-head-of-Cosmos. To realize
that every conscious state is at once known by the Awareness—
surely this is an ever-present power over morals.
The nature of Consciousness is such that you cannot deceive it,
bribe it, lie to it. Consciousness is cosmic, is immanent in all
minds everywhere, is a universal process. The nature of
Consciousness is a better guide to all creatures in all worlds than
would be a multiplicity of externally enforced plans, and better
than any preconceived design, because Consciousness is immanent
in the mind of every creature and continuously readapts itself to
ever-changing conditions of environment; and to Consciousness,
mind is an environment.
It is especially significant that the study of this subject of
Consciousness by the new methods requires a highly developed
moral and religious life. It is not only upon a complete and
accurate scientific knowledge about life and its environment that
we should depend for conduct-guidance but also upon the feelings
and impulsions and other goings-on of life itself. Life is larger and
more complex than our knowledge of it; we need not only the
guidance of our scientific knowledge about the esthesias but also
the guidance of the esthesias themselves, for there is much more to
them than we know. We should be led not only by science and
philosophy but also by the scientific and philosophic processes and
abilities and impulsions going on in us, and also by the self-
directive and cumulative process of the world’s progress
[page 352]
in science and philosophy. Not only a knowledge of things but
also the natures and happenings of the things themselves, not only
our knowledge of Mind (Life) and Consciousness but the felt
influences of the continuous goings-on of Mind and
Consciousness, should lead us; for it is by this felt influence that
their (to us largely unknown) natures and activities become more

fully operative in our lives. Not only what we know and feel but
also that much larger part that we do not know and feel should be
allowed freedom to affect us. The alogical and subconscious and
superconscious do actually lead and drive us according to their
own cosmic natures, but it is our scientific knowledge of them that
enables us to utilize them more directly, efficiently, and
completely, and to avoid useless effort and mistakes. Therefore, to
study Mind and Consciousness successfully we must live the
natural and sincere daily life of Consciousness and Mind and
thereby put ourselves not merely under the guidance of our
scientific knowledge of these things but also under the leadership
of the things themselves. Students may enter further and deeper
into the cognostic domain. A new psychology arises: a
cognostology. Through cognosis we are able to study the eternal
and universal; if there is a Life Beyond and if ever we reach direct
knowledge of it, it will be through cognosis. (Up to the advent of
psychurgy nothing had been found in the mind that was adapted to
an eternal or universal life—only a cognistic hope for a life beyond
the grave and love’s promise.)
Cognosis is in touch with that which the religiously inclined,
without being able to define it, have been seeking in all ages;
namely, conscious contact with this immanent and transcendent
regnancy of the Cosmic Process. It is by cognosis that we actually
come into the presence of the unmediated flat, and in a far more
fundamental way than has ever been conceived possible.
Cognostic experiences are not mystical experiences. It is hard to
drive from the human mind this obsessing phantom of mysticism,
so long has the mind been schooled in it. Eastern pantheism with
its “All-pervading Presence” and its “divine Unity manifesting
[page 353]
as multiplicity” gave us philosophic mysticism. As Monism it
quickened the intellect of Plato; as Neo-Platonism it entered
Christianity. The sparks that kindled the Reformation came from
the brains of two German mystics—Eckhart and Tauler. Luther
drank deep at the same mystic spring. Philosophical mysticism
seeks intellectually to know about God; religious mysticism seeks
esthesically to know and feel God. The one contemplates, the
other worships; the one thinks, the other loves; the one wonders,
the other adores. Professor James says that ‘personal religious
experience has its root and center in mystical states of
consciousness.’ How could it be otherwise when cognostic
realities cannot be cognitively apprehended, or at least cannot be
cognitively described? How could it be otherwise when the mind
has tried to cognize things not cognizable, but only cognosable?
How futile to attempt to image that which is non-cognitive! Of

course the result will be nothing other than mystical states of

consciousness as long as cognition tries to grasp cognosis, as long
as the fish tries to walk. The psychurgic religion has its root and
center in cognostic states of Consciousness cognostically known,
and thereby mysticism vanishes; and while these experiences are
cognitively uncommunicable, they are not cognostically so from a
teacher who has had the experiences to a pupil who has the ability
to receive them. Moreover, never before in long history has there
been any experience so indubitably known. Truly it is a religious
basis built on a rock.
Copernicus changed man’s conception of the universe by
making the sun and not the earth the center (or one of the centers)
of the mechanical system; so cognistics and cognostics have
changed man’s conception of religion by making the nature of
(mind and) Consciousness, and not anything else whatever, the
center of the moral, ethical, and religious system. It is its own
mind and environment and the nature of Consciousness that
determines for any creature in any world what is good or bad, right
or wrong. Ultimately the conception of right and wrong is either
the nature of Consciousness or the nature of
[page 354]
matter and motion. We do not bow to some external authority: our
authority is our own immanent nature—not the Light Within (that
is merely a cognistic tool).
The conclusion from the cognitive, local, and temporal nature
of reason that what is true to one creature may be false to another,
that what is beautiful to one may be ugly to another, that what is
good for one may be bad for another, and so on, is of profound
philosophical and religious significance, especially when it is
remembered that this is not true of cognosis.
That the Light Within (the moral conscience, or Kant’s
categorical imperative) is purely cognistic is a discovery of far-
reaching practical consequence to morals, ethics, and religion. To
see this great truth and to see that the standard for conscience is in
the nature of the mind itself, and that to accumulate validated data
in science, philosophy, and art, and in the objective imperative, is
to normalize and rectify the conscience. By rectification is meant
the adaptation of conscience to what is normal in a given species.
[From diaries of 1903-4, one phase of Gates’ study of
Consciousness, felt as a “self” or presence, is described.]
October 24, 1903. I awoke this morning with my mind filled
with utter wonder about Consciousness—that life’s maximum joy
consists in re-functioning and intensifying our awareness of the
world, or our knowledge of it. Hence Awareness sums up the joys
of intellection, esthesis, and conation, sums up our experience with

the Outside World and the Inside World. I had arrived at new
content and meaning—in sight of unexplored domains. The new
meaning was that the joy of one’s awareness of that knowledge of
an esthesia once experienced is like a snapshot of that pleasure to
be carried afterward. Not merely as a memory will that experience
be retained, but as an introspective formula for repeating and re-
experiencing all the best of it without the bad—and that best a
thousand times magnified, not merely the pleasure but the bliss of
awareness of that pleasure. It was my first insight into the esthesic
pyramid, or psychotaxis of esthesias. I can now state that the
greatest discovery will relate not merely to Consciousness but to
the art of increasing,
[page 355]
augmenting, and prolonging its happy states, which are the sole
objects of all efforts.
February 13, 1904. This morning just after awakening and
while my body was as yet motionless with a feeling that I did not
want to move and my senses were quiescent, but fully awake, I
again had the recently oft-repeated experience of being in close
communion with my own Consciousness and Awareness, but in
addition I strongly felt that larger Self of the Cosmic Mental life in
which I am a unit. These experiences have taught me that my
usual daily attempts at quiescence are comparatively ineffective, as
I do not really get quiet. When all mental and bodily disturbances
are completely at rest, then those unusual and but little-used mental
powers are free to act; and in one of these moods I ought to
discover something about the mind and its relation to Cosmos.
Sunday, March 13, 1904. More and more frequently I have
these morning inner experiences, but I can never quite describe
them because their emotive content is so much larger than the
intellective. This morning, however, I had just a little intellective
content—but I must nevertheless try to describe it by something
else as a dim suggestion. On awakening it has become my habit to
contemplate or try to realize my mental relations to The All, or to
my Consciousness or Awareness. So accustomed have I become
to this daily “communion” that if it does not take place I miss it
like a loved one. It does not take place every morning. It used to
be only once or twice a year, then every month or so, but recently
about once or twice a week, and I am greatly interested. I very
much desire to attain some new insight into my relation to the
immanent Consciousness that underlies and builds my mind, or the
Awareness that witnesses my mind and is regnant over it, or to that
Cosmic Life and Mind with which my Consciousness or
Awareness is in touch; or if possible to get some kind of touch,
intellection, emotion, conation, with either the immanent or

superregnant mind of Cosmos or some individualized or organized

intelligence therein. I hold myself free of prejudice.
[page 356]
There is an outer series of cosmic events, such as movement of
the stars and the evolution of life on earth, and my own
subconscious life processes, over which I do not have direct
volitional control; and there is an inner series of cosmic conditions
called Consciousness and Awareness over which I have no direct
volitional control; and between them exists my own inner mind-
series, which according to its knowledge of all three series enables
me to adapt my acts to purposive conduct. If that knowledge is
correct and extensive and if feelings are normal, I will drift or
conform to the trend, or tendency, of the cosmic series. Now, my
knowledge is limited and largely incorrect, and to that extent I am
apt to run constantly counter to the cosmic purpose, or telos. But if
I am in close touch with my Consciousness or Awareness, it may
influence my mind (intellectively, emotionally, or subconsciously),
being part of the cosmic series that tend to normalize me. Now, I
have felt during this morning experience that I am getting nearer to
something. This morning I felt strongly that I was face to-face
with the Cosmic Presence as a Self. . . . It was like a characteristic
feeling, advice to a friend, or new insight into work. Add to this
feeling that characterizes a coming insight, the further feeling that I
had of a Cosmic Presence combined with the feeling that precedes
the advent of a new idea—of an idea scared away. . . .Henceforth
we will be companions, aware of each other. Then the feeling of
the presence and of the dawning insight withdrew behind the thick
veil, and I felt so lonely.
Do you understand, O my reader, that if it ever does speak to
me in unmistakable terms, I will carry out its behests despite
deaths, devils, and hells—will do it if it takes me millions of lives
and work in millions of worlds. Or I will do it even if with the
insight comes the knowledge that in a few short years death will be
the end of me forever and forever. I am arriving at a point of view
about my relations to the outer and inner series of activities and
conditions.
March 30, 1904. My tendency to contemplate The All and my
relation to it is growing so strong that it is the almost invariable
[page 357]
content of my consciousness when I awake. A sweet, beautiful
elevating rapture, full of trust and hope and a growing
consciousness of a Presence, so strong it begins to pervade my
dream-states and makes my nights peaceful and free from worry.
This sweet Consciousness of Awareness coming in contact with

the Cosmic Life begins to be felt in my subconscious instead of my

worries; this Awareness comes of its own accord. I wonder if my
long worry has been one of the means of training by which I can
accomplish this. I never succeed in writing what I intend. It is
largely a feeling-content and wholly indescribable.
August 8, 1904. This morning I felt again close to the Great
Presence—that Consciousness as I experienced it is conscious of
something larger than itself—of something that affects me as a
presence that is aware of me, and of which I am dimly conscious.
The problem is becoming amazingly clearer, this morning more
than ever: how I should study Cosmic Consciousness; that
esthesias are constants and intellections are variables in motives;
that introspection is Consciousness noticing one’s mental states,
that consciousing is Consciousness noticing itself; and whether
Cosmic Consciousness is a Personality or a Force, I can hope to
learn how to utilize it directly. Consciousness is the route to a
knowledge of one’s own mind and through that a knowledge of the
subjective Self of Cosmos, which is one’s completed self.
Awareness is a route to a knowledge of the objective self of
Cosmos. Every morning I awake with the consciousing process
going on, and I feel very near to a Presence and to a great
discovery-a great Power.
Such were some of his insights through 1904, and by 1905 he

wrote: “I became aware that the Cosmic Consciousness recognized
me and saw that I knew it. But O so subtle-evanescent, different
from what would be supposed—simpler—grander.”
But it was his sophic dominancy of 1910 that allowed him to
write his treatise on Selves, Persons, and Cosms, summarizing his
discoveries and adding many new ones on this fascinating
[page 358]
subject of self. Original in scope and content, a culminating
contribution of his cognostic and cognistic study, he wrote of it,
“Someone, somewhere, a hundred years from now will understand
it.”
In that same unusually fruitful year he restated his experience
with additions as follows: (Adapted.)
I am entering into the first glimpses of a Cosmos that is

unutterably more wonderful than the cosmos hitherto known or
imagined. A Cosmos that underlies all kinds of existences hitherto
known or conceived. Immanent in all these alleged incarnate and
incarnate beings, in the whole Mechanical System and Biotic
System—immanent in and yet aloof from all these things is
another and far more wonderful Cosmos. This Cosmos of

Consciousness as organized cognosis is a “Cognocosmos" that

abides in all worlds and times. It is an infinity of interconnected
cognostic states and processes, psychotaxically related and
coordinated into a system of being that abides forever, enthroned
in that other cosmos which we have hitherto known, but not
partaking of its mutations. This infinite and universal
Cognocosmos abides as a self-conscious identity while its
Mechano-Biotic Body of Universes undergoes perpetual change.
By cognosis every cognitive state is found to contain an
uninterpreted conscious state. This by having invariably occurred
as a concomitant to any given stimulus or movement has become
the sign of it and comes to have that meaning to that creature in
which it occurs. This is the psychurgic law of cognition. Now, if
the cognitive complexus is introspected according to art, the
uninterpreted conscious state hidden therein may be detected and
identified, may be known to be non-cognitive, may be known not
to be partaking in any cognitive illusion or error, and may be
directly and immediately known by a non-cognitive mode of
knowing.
Having identified the non-cognitive conscious state in the
typical intellections, ethesias, urgations, and introspections, it may
thereafter be easily re-functioned (so far as the cognitive
[page 359]
part is con-cerned), producing thereby less obstruction to its
apparition, for its manifestation is transitory. By and by after
physiological quiescence and subsequent practice of psychurgic
introspection, this conscious state may be caused to take notice of
itself and thereby become conscious of changes that take place in
it—changes not of one’s volition—and thereby become conscious
of the qualities, durations, intensities, clusterings, successions, and
mutual modifications of these states. The Awareness is a witness
of that consciousing process. It is the very inmost secret of nature
and life, Consciousness consciousing Consciousness, and I call it
cognosis, but it is the regnancy that has superimposed a Cosmos of
Consciousness upon the mechanical system of the universe.
Any conscious state contains behind the “Veil” a
Consciousness-state that may be caused, if you know how, to
reveal the whole nature and potency of the cosmically existent
Consciousness and its associated and other kinds of coordinate
Being. Consciousness per se by cognosing itself will make this
revelation; it will not be your doing it: a non-individualized nature
is revealing itself to itself and you witness through the Awareness
the Revelator and the revelation. This is in fact and deed an actual
contact with the superhuman; the result is a knowing that is
absolutely known. It is not speculative mystery nor a dream vision

seen through the eyes of faith; it is the most veritably known and
surely certain of all knowledge.
All this is what happened to me when I discovered cognosis,
when the new type of mind was born in me. Never will I forget it.
Although over a third of a century has elapsed since my mind saw
the first glow of the gray dawn, over fifteen years since it turned
red, seven years since the horizon began to grow white, and nearly
three years since the full and direct rays of the Light shone upon
me—not yet (1910) has the ineffable joy of that occasion ceased to
make my heart beat fuller and faster. Veritably it seemed to me
that the half-awakened and still awakening “soul of the world" was
not unaware of what was happening when this revelation first
knowingly occurred in a mind of the
[page 360]
human race, and it seems to me, day by day, that this “world soul"
is still and consciously aware of every step. Every morning I
awake at an early hour to my daily mentative work and as I sit
down at my desk to record my dawning insights regarding
psychurgic matters, I feel an inrush of ectic joy that like a large
wave engulfs my own little entic ripples of enthusiasm and sweeps
them into every shore of my being. I know of no other joy that so
completely meets the Approvals, is so completely satisfying, so
triumphantly and ecstatically blissful, just as it was when the light
of the New Cycle first dispelled the cognitive darkness in my
brain. I repeat, I feel I was not alone in my joy; I speak of it as of
psychologic significance. It seems to me that wonder has not yet
ceased to open wider its eyes; surprise still stands contemplatively
transfixed just as it stood when the Veil began to lift; curiosity still
stands tiptoe on the Height, eager for more although scarcely able
to bear any more; and Reverence still kneels in ecstatic adoration.
So it is when a Pupil is first thrust into Cognosis land: the mind
only slowly awakens to the wonder of the new experience; there is
a dazed realization that something momentous has happened, but
only after several years of life in the new order does he begin to
realize some phases of it concretely.
This incomplete and very imperfect explanation may give some
sort of idea of the nature of cognosis and thereby a better
understanding of the nature of cognisis (cognition), but this
understanding is not the equivalent of experiencing cognosis.
Life as hitherto understood is cognistic only, but now the life
process includes cognosis, which is not local, relative, temporal, or
individual but universal, impersonal, and eternal; that is, cognosis
brings life into alignment with a different order of Existence. It
turns out that life is something more than mind, but it is a different
kind of life than belonging to our customary experience and is

sharply contrasted with it. This other kind of Being is not what
might be supposed. It is not, for instance, what has been called
“spirit” or “soul” or “the next world,”
[page 361]
but is quite different. Ordinary language cannot convey a correct
understanding of cognosis. It is hard for the unprepared mind even
to understand psychurgy, because it is so unlike our customary and
naive mental methods.
Cognosis must be so taught as to reveal clearly that it is a
natural phenomenon, and to it no person can claim sole access, as a
mediator or vicegerent, and thereby base upon it a priest-craft. I
must expound the teaching of that which is not myself or my
personality or thought; namely, the nature and activities of
Consciousness as known to Consciousness itself, directly.
Consciousness as cognosis talks a different language. Cognitive
language cannot be used. Happily cognosis uses a more directly
immediate mode of communication, a universal language
understandable by the consciousness in all creatures and worlds,
and he who takes the first step in cognosis has already learned its
language. As its activities are not subject to our cognitive volition,
its own initiative must be awaited, and progress is slow unless
much time is spent getting ready. Flashes of cognosis are
transitory at first, hardly to be discriminated from introspection;
but with a re-functioning of the cognitive response to it, facility in
not prohibiting its influx is achieved, and sooner or later the new
vision of the Cosmos is attained. In and through cognosis we
make an adaptation to eternal and universal environment.
Cognition is secular, cognosis is intrinsically religious. In it we
find something not humanly transitory upon which to lean but
something universally regnant. In it and in alethiocracy—the rule
of truth as validated knowledge—lies the central point of the
world’s attention during the coming centuries.
Is it not strange that Consciousness, the most potent and
important of all known causes, has been regarded by science and
philosophy as a mere abstraction? A modern scientist has asked,
“Is there such a thing as Consciousness?" Another writes, “For
though the individual Consciousness represents the fullest and
most concrete generalization of philosophy, yet none the less, it is
not concrete, it is not real. It lacks the thisness, the alogical
[page 362]
immediacy that alone can give it flesh and blood-in a word, life.
The individual consciousness, the object properly of psychology, is
itself no more than a general type." It has been assumed that just
as there is no such actual creature as mankind, or Man, but only

this and that individual man, so also there is no such actual thing as
Consciousness but only this and that cognitive or knowing state;
that Consciousness per se does not actually have a concrete
manifestation but is merely an abstract term. Now, just as in every
individual man there is an actual life going on, so in each cognitive
state there is Consciousness going on, else we would not be aware
of it. While consciousness lasts it is doing something: it is not
merely the sign of some particular cognitive meaning to the
creature in which it occurs, but it is also modifying other conscious
states that are coexistent. It is initiating and causing biochemical
and histological changes in the brain; it is directing and setting in
motion the subconscious processes; it is directing the will and
causing and controlling the bodily molar motions.
There is found in every living thing a vast kingdom of
Consciousness states just as real as the plants and animals in which
they reside, and they constitute the most important factor in living
things. Consciousness states have relations of a kind that is
disparate from relations of cognitive states. Cognitive states
constitute the kingdom of mind, and within it is a kingdom of
Consciousness per se-the Cosmos of Consciousness!
Psychurgy will strike the public as something novel. It will
seem less novel than when I first discovered it and taught it to my
teachers (1873-6) or when I first publicly announced it (1894). My
lectures and various articles, and the more recent work on practical
psychology and efficiency, have been preparing the way for
psychurgy; but cognostology has not had its way smoothed. It is
new, with a novelty so extraordinary that only a few will
understand it and fewer still attain it. Most persons will sincerely
mistake introspective analysis or introspection or “knowledge
about" cognosis for actual cognosis. Preconceptions
[page 363]
and wrong interpretations of their own mental life also prevents the
new experience. How often I have labored all day with a man
trying to explain it, only to find that he cannot even introspect!
And such a person will nearly always remark about cognosis,
“That is just what I do when I get quiet,” although he will not have
the faintest notion of what I mean. If the investigator has not the
power of cognosis, then that new and momentous domain of the
Cosmos (the Cognocosmos) that contains the Cognostic Self will
not open to him.
To the inexperienced it is very difficult to differentiate between
introspection and apperceptive contemplation or analysis; and it
often happens that such a self-analysis is mistaken for
introspection. The difficulty lies in saying precisely what is meant;
and the interpretation made here of actual phenomena that do occur

may happen to be wrong, but the description will still serve to

indicate to the practicing pupil what experience was attended to.
The very newness of these realms makes them difficult to be
understood; the new subject cannot be taught except by actual
experiencing, because cognitive language and its meanings are not
applicable to non-cognitive and meaningless things. The pupil will
begin with the Old Introspection, and by practice and growth and
favorable periods and insights the Awareness will enter more and
more into the introspection and become part of it long before he is
able to identify and use it separately. The first form of cognosis to
be attained will be “entognosis.” This is not any form of cognition,
not even introspection in any of its modes. It is not a cognition of
cognosis (cognicognosis). It is not even ceptation, which merely
witnesses that the mutual modification of cepts is the cause and
nature of qualitation, while entognosis is a direct and immediate
experiencing of the self-activity going on within a cept; it
experiences (entognoses) the moment of Consciousness per se,
which is the ens of a cept, and experiences (entognoses) its urging,
which is taking place of its own accord. Thus Consciousness
reveals to itself its own
[page 364]
nature and modes by entognosis, the data of which are
“entognocepts” (entognology); and they are absolutely known
criteria of truth, constituting the basis of a new and more
fundamental epistemology.
When Consciousness asks of itself what it knows about itself as
a kind of Being, the mode of inquiry is “ontognosis,” and the data
are “ontognocepts” (ontognology), constituting a new and more
fundamental ontology. Ontognosis is the knowing part of the
Three Kingdoms of Being telling about Being.
When Consciousness as a subject witnesses itself as object, the
process is “Awaring.” When the entire content and activity of
ontognosis and entognosis and ceptation is witnessed by
Consciousness, the witnessing part (subject) is the “Awareness,”
technically called cognognosis (that is, a cognosis of gnosis).
Entognosis is a window into one of the Eternals (the
Beginning-less Realities) through which you may look upon that
which in all ages and worlds is the Mind Builder, furnishing the
cepts therefore. According to its nature and modes of activity, it is
the “Teacher" of all evolving creatures in all times and worlds. In
entognosis you experience, directly and immediately (that is,
without a mediator) the Supremest Regnancy of Existence; you
feel its nature, so you will know just what it is like; and you will
experience its Self-Activity as a non-individualistic going-on
independently of your own volition. You will entognose one phase

of self-active and self-conscious Being. In entognosis, “your”

consciousness is conscious of the only self-active Eternal—of the
only Eternal that is alive—of the only Eternal that can know—the
one by which all the others, including itself, are known:
Consciousness!
Psychurgy is an art of using the mind and body as a whole
(physiologic, subconscious, urgative, esthesic, intellective,
introspective), and of using its environmental interactions more
efficiently and effectively. Psychurgy is a mind-art. The new
domain has given rise to a Consciousness-art, which is not applied
to the mind and is not psychurgy (although psychurgy makes use
of
[page 365]
it). The new power is not the mind but that which makes the mind.
It is a hitherto unrecognized self-activity that builds the histologic
structure in which mind is embodied, and this power in
Consciousness per se. When this power becomes conscious of
itself, it is cognosis—Consciousness becoming conscious of its
own states and processes.
The beneficent and successful using of mind is not prevented if
we happen not to know the ultimate nature of Consciousness any
more than the using of electricity was prevented when we knew
less about its nature than now. A definition of electricity in terms
of the phenomena and uniformities (laws) it presents to
observation has proved sufficient for a high technical and
commercial development. Likewise definitions of mind and
Consciousness in terms of the phenomena and uniformities (laws)
presented objectively and subjectively and cognostically win be
sufficient for the development of an art of research and its
application to all human affairs. “The identification of cognosis
with a form of Consciousness may be considered one of my
important interpretative steps, but the fact that a state is
enregistered as more mind and brain is the important thing,
whether my explanation is right or wrong. Cognosis as a criterion
of truth serves as the basic validation. “The indubitable facts are:
Consciousness actually organizes, distributes, constructs,
architecturally shapes, initiates and controls the movements of
matter in organisms; the structural form is determined by the
Consciousness content of cognition; Consciousness wields
cognosis and cognition; and morphology and activities are
determined by cognosis and cognition and not by matter and
motion. These are the most optimistically melioristic facts known
to me. They are the base of the psychurgic philosophy and reli-
gion.

What I have discovered is of extreme importance to that

greatest factor in progress, the ability to discover and validate and
apply knowledge. After I had wandered into the new regions, all I
had to do to find out new things was to “look and listen" and report
upon what was going on around me. It was
[page 366]
so interesting and valuable that I gave my whole life to the new
things I found.
Cognosis, child or modern science!

The end of the quest for certainty led Elmer Gates into the
countless “new beginnings" of the new and startling Cosmos of
Consciousness!

The Twelve Years’ Work
[page 367]
PART THREE
I began my study of this subject when very young—even while I

was 8 years old I was under the inspiration of the trends,
tendencies, and predilections of my lifework. That was 44 years
ago, and since not one day has passed without my attention on the
mind-using problem at least a short time. Over 33 of these years
were devoted to a systematic study of cognition, and 26 to
experimental research largely in the laboratory, and 14 quite
largely to cognosis. I find I have made an almost unbelievably
large number of experiments in the laboratory and a still greater
number of introspective, askeotechnical, socio-mentative and other
subjective experiments and now, during the Twelve Years I am
ready cognostically to, interpret them, expound and organize them,
and transmit them to competent pupils.
—ELMER GATES, diary, 1911
[page 368: blank]

[page 369]
CHAPTER 17
A Dominancy Won
There’s not a joy the world can give, like that it takes away.
—BYRON
During the period of adjustment after moving into Washington,

occasionally in the early morning before starting his writing Elmer
Gates would recite this somewhat contradictory opening line of
one of the poet’s “Stanzas for Music,” repeating it as in reverie
rather quizzically, for his whole attitude decried it. For him,
“When the glow of early thought declines in feeling’s dull decay”
was denied by his continuously expanding inlook and outlook as
his early thought grew into psychurgy and the new world of
Consciousness.
After leaving Chevy Chase, he immediately began preparation
for the next step in his work, and from a number of people
unsolicited overtures of help were received, even from several
strangers. On January 1, 1909, he sent out a “Letter of Gates to
Some Friends,” of sixty-three pages, which led to a deal in
February to handle some inventions according to his satisfaction

and psychurgic principles, giving to the parties the privilege of

establishing an “Affiliated Research Department of the
Laboratories of Psychology and Psychurgy.” He had come to
believe that no one would ever make a success of his inventions by
direct
[page 370]
attempts to freeze him out of legitimate rights, or by clever legal
arrangement to secure his real assets. He had grown indifferent to
such attempts. On the contrary all those to whom he had from time
to time donated inventional ideas to help their development or
assist some phase of World Work had inevitably profited.
“Although the vultures seem to be devouring the carcass of the
Chevy Chase Laboratory and carrying it away piece by piece, the
soul of that institution still abides in the psychurgic work,” his
letter stated.
In his “Confidential Report of the Year 1909 on the Psychurgic
Work,” written in early April, Gates described his next step as
making money for a “Preliminary Exhibit” of his main results to
obtain larger means for establishing and supporting a bureau of
some one science. With these facilities he would teach psychurgy
and train assistants for the next Twelve Years’ work. In the
meantime he would continue the organization of affiliated research
departments. He had been able to devote most of his time to his
main work because whenever the prospect of a business deal
occurred he would always wait to see if in the ordinary course of
events an opportunity would come without his getting tied up in
business. For over thirty years one had arrived in time, but now he
needed a bigger opportunity. The struggle for money had already
consumed too much time, so that only by strict economy of health
and energy could he hope to complete his task. “Naught else than
my awareness of the heavy weight of the world’s ignorance and
woe, thrust upon my sympathies at all hours, would have driven
me through this long and difficult journey in search of knowledge
that will tend towards an amelioration of human life. Not even my
superlative joy in creative work, nor any other selfish motive. It is
difficult for neighbors or even most associates to understand the
depths and intensity of love for the human race that may animate
one who thankfully discovers he has abilities which if utilized will
be of fundamental use to them. Not until he saw a drowning man
did the apparently indifferent onlooker realize the struggling
instinct and intensity of feeling which impelled him at once to risk
his

[page 371]
life in attempting to save a stranger. Not until a man realizes he
has actual help for the human race does he know with what
inexorable urgings and love he will be impelled into his mission.”
So wrote Gates in this report. His close friend Thomas Hovenden,
a successful artist with everything to live for, had not hesitated in
his attempt—which cost him his life—to save a child from under
the menacing hooves of the heavy horses drawing a beer wagon.
The Psychurgic Work was planned to be the private and
personal work of a series of laboratory leaders who were to be
affiliated in a cooperative endeavor. One of these of course would
be the Elmer Gates Laboratories. Out of these were to come the
data of the work. There is no record of other laboratories, but
Gates wrote to his friend Senator Towne in 1900: “There are
sacred obligations of mine with an organization which is not of a
public character and in which I am a chief factor—an organization
whose welfare lies enthroned more nearly in the center of my heart
than matters of money or fame; and my ability to keep my
obligations therewith are prerequisites to any deal.”
His study of the mind led thousands of devotees of all kinds of
“faiths, fads, and isms” to quote Gates in all sorts of imaginary
tales, and he found it no easy task to sift those “precious few who
really wanted the truth” and were willing to submit their beliefs
and theories to stern scientific tests and not claim as true what they
did not know. His study of the sciences and arts by psychological
methods also attracted the curiosity of orthodox scientists, “some
few of whom were not frightened by the evident trend of
psychophysical investigation towards a recognition of the
causative effects of Consciousness in the Cosmos.” In his attempts
to organize the psychurgic World Work, he stressed the necessity
of cooperating associates having “the superb honesty not to
pretend to know what they really did not know.”
To aid in financing these plans he announced the need for a
solicitor and organizer who would involve this work with none of
his own activities, businesses, beliefs, or theories. This
requirement
[page 372]
was difficult enough and was never realized, but finding helpers in
the World Work was even more exacting. It was imperative to
teach at all times only scientifically established knowledge tested
by all known methods of validation. Until beliefs have been so
established, they could not form part of the work or be used as data
in the Mind Art. He did not wish to endorse any belief or join any
“society, fad, or colony.” At different times he was approached by
parties connected with movements who argued that if he really

loved humanity he should give all his discoveries and inventions to

their cause. The severe test always came when the leaders were
asked if they were willing to limit their talk and teachings to
scientifically demonstrated knowledge.
“It will be one of the religious ideals of the World Work to
devote a whole long life of earnest endeavor to the working out of
the natural expression of whatever genius we may have so we may
offer its results as a finished product, as a completed lifework, to
our fellow World Workers and through them to humanity. We will
offer our lives as a lifework to the great cause of human
betterment, and seek to live as long as possible to arrive at mature
judgment. We will be more willing to live for our cause than die
for it. . . . Hence—O Brother of mine in the great CAUSE, I ask
you to allow me to remain free from joining your societies or
endorsing your beliefs, but on that account I am not any less able
to give you all I have to give of that kind of gifts you are prepared
to use.” So the report stressed.
There were not many who could do just what Gates wanted,
and who were free and willing. Of those few with first-class
abilities and inspired by a true love of mankind, most were already
committed to some business or career or yoked to some hampering
belief. Most of those morally desirable, with enthusiasm for the
World Work, were so hopelessly devoid of necessary intellectual
ability and technical knowledge of some line of research that they
were useless, while those with ability and training were deficient in
the other qualities. He distinguished two broad classes of minds
influential in modem affairs, the report
[page 373]
continued: the religio-philosophical and mystical; and the
technically practical and scientific. One was overawed by the
mystery and the sublimity of the known and fear of the unknown,
and followed a blind faith in some belief or certain leaders; the
other preferred proven knowledge. “The foreglow of the Dawn
was in the latter, the afterglow of the Past in the former. The best
of the past survived potently in the former with the spirit of holy
endeavor; and among them were some of the rarest natures and
greatest persons, filled with intense love for humanity and for what
they believed to be the One and Highest." They were ready to
make any sacrifice for what they believed true (however absurd it
was scientifically or practically), but were so totally lacking in
scientific ability and technical knowledge that they were unable to
discriminate between what had been proved by valid evidence and
what had not, between the true and the plausible. “I have patiently
and intimately studied them in their various beliefs, systems,
societies and movements. I have entered into the spirit and

atmosphere, looking for that truth or feeling which animates them;

entered into their evidences with an open mind; and while I have
found great persons and fine ideals (the best raw material for the
New Era), I have been convinced that their fundamental mistake is
they are not sufficiently in touch with the spirit and methods of
science. If they can be induced to teach only that which is
demonstrated and validated knowledge, they will form the best
workers to carry science to the world.
“In like manner,” Gates continued in the report, “I have
summered and wintered with the modern scientist, and know that
with all his intellectual ability and technical knowledge, there is
only one in a thousand who is emotionally and religiously
constructed to feel deeply the sacred cause of human progress as a
mission for his direct endeavor. There is only occasionally one
who does not shut out from his consciousness, by a skepticism
which refuses to investigate, more or less of the Dawn. There is
real religious significance to knowledge and a sacredness to human
life and a relatedness to the Cosmic Process toward
[page 374]
which scientists are tending, but to which most have not yet
arrived; but some of the greatest minds belong to this class.”
To carry on the work as outlined required both types of minds.
In all attempts to improve the conditions of humanity it is
necessary first and foremost, he emphasized, to know indubitably
how to discriminate between truth and error, fact and theory,
knowledge and hypothesis, science and belief; otherwise there can
be no real progress. The fundamental method of human progress is
to apply the art of discovery to the sciences, preferring no one over
another and omitting none; and so far as results are applicable to
human needs, they should be made available. “Then the holy work
of human betterment will be directed by the trend of knowledge
and events and not by mere theories and personal schemes and
beliefs, and we will avoid the ever-repeated mistake of attempting
to force upon the world our own petty plans as substitutes for the
Cosmic Process.”
The report concludes with a summary of some of the special
rules and principles of the psychurgic work; it points out that any
organization for cooperative action according to specialized
individual fitness requires the system and guidance of psychotaxic
methods. The Thirty-three Years’ work he had just completed
gave methods for organizing operations of the intellect; the next
Twelve Years’ work would organize methods for feelings,
emotions, and subconscious processes; then the Seven Years’ work
would likewise organize conations. Until their completion, no
organization would be formulated. Any person in the world was

eligible. To make validated scientific discoveries the basis of all

work, and to go no faster, was one of the religious principles of
psychurgy. Only scientifically validated knowledge and a
scientifically formulated art of using the conscious states and
processes is the fundamental method of progress; and
Consciousness is the fundamental cause of progress. The
cognostic criterion requires a systematic re-observation and re-
classification of the data of the sciences. A new social and
industrial system is necessary; the ideals and methods of today
[page 375]
are incomplete and insufficient (brotherly love will not solve most
problems); and until reformers have made a serious study of
conscious states and processes, they are not competent to act. The
immediate mission of the psychurgic work is to re-observe,
validate, and classify the sciences, with facilities for teaching them.
This report was witnessed by Theodore L. and E. D. Pitt, father
and son, who were associated with Gates in his War for Peace
program. The report closed with the final admonition that none of
its material was to be disclosed to friends or member societies,
fearing misinterpretation.
His friend Clifford Howard wrote from California to Gates:
“What is the impelling spirit of human progress? It is not inherent
in the race.” On December 8, 1908, during the last month at
Chevy Chase with its impending crisis, Gates replied that
Consciousness is the basis of human progress. “The greatest factor
in human progress is a Great Person, and increasingly so as
evolution advances. As Whitman says in substance: ‘produce great
persons and the rest follows; institutions, religions, and
civilizations stand aside and let them pass and then follow after.’
But progress is the outcome of something more than individualism.
In a great person the Cosmic nature of Consciousness is more fully
manifested than in lesser minds; the mind has attained a higher
evolutionary development and a more universalized expression and
partakes of a larger portion of the universe. I am not trying to be
mystical: if a million radiometers were placed in sunlight every
one would begin to revolve at once, and notwithstanding individual
peculiarities, each would revolve more rapidly if the sun’s rays got
stronger and less rapidly if the rays got weaker. Its efficiency
would depend upon its completeness as an instrument, just as
man’s efficiency depends upon his completeness as a mind. The
greatest person and the greatest radiometer would do the best work
because each most nearly corresponds with the Cosmic conditions
of success. All the radiometers would respond to fluctuations in
the sun’s rays, to a force outside themselves and to that extent
function non-individually; in like manner a million minds may

[page 376]
respond to Cosmic influences outside themselves, as for instance to
the inherent nature of Consciousness that is immanent in each
mind, and thus function non-individually and more perfectly as
they become greater and completer persons. That is,
Consciousness has its own nature and mode of activity whomever
it manifests; and to its laws all mind must conform. . . .
“The very nature of Consciousness and the modes of its
activities underlie all forms of life and organic progress. As
manifest in a mind, Consciousness prefers pleasurable to painful
states; it organizes experiences by classifying them and because
Consciousness can detect likenesses between states as well as
differences, classification is unavoidable; it prefers a true picture of
its surroundings to a false one, and so on. Therefore the
fundamental cause of progress appears to lie in the very nature of
Consciousness, and this nature is Cosmic. . . .”
The period of adjustment before getting well into the Twelve
Years’ work was to be devoted for two years or so to solving the
ever-perplexing problem of livelihood and support of the
psychurgic work. It was also a time of increased skill in using
mentative dominancies. Gates understood his mind well enough to
know it would never handle the financial problem, except in a
temporary manner, unless it could be induced to take up the
problem psychurgically and make discoveries. His mind must
become dominant on finances, but first it must get interested, and
that was the difficulty. He was sick and tired of inventions, they
gave so much trouble; his ideas were so frequently stolen, and
people were so unscrupulously greedy and frequently dishonest
that he disliked being involved in business dickerings. Not that the
inventions were not good, he remonstrated (over a dozen had been
appropriated and were in use), but he did not like the spirit in
which business was done. The task, then, was to establish a
practical, or conative, dominancy of livelihood and business. But
his mind was to reach it deviously through other important
dominancies: one in paideutics (teaching), and one in sophics
(philosophy and religion).
His first intentional teaching leading to the paideutic
dominancy
[page 377]
was begun sometime before May 1909, during a peripatetic walk
over the new Rock Creek Bridge with two prospective students: his
sister-in-law and secretary, Pearlie, and her friend Marian Lee
Patterson, daughter of his good friends. The latter student’s mind
did not take up acoustics and music as supposed, but philosophy

and religion (sophics); while the former student also wanted

further insights into religion. Thus Gates was stimulated in
paideutics as well as in sophics. It was necessary to prepare a
special Propaedeutic, one that would serve for the Twelve Years’
work. While he was writing this, his mind had to rearrange and re-
coordinate its previously acquired philosophical data; and by going
over them again and again he became functionally dominant, and
was stimulated to take further steps in sophiology.
The importance of this subject to a beginning student soon
became apparent. Every person who does any thinking at all,
Gates reasoned, has arrived at opinions of some kind about life and
the world; no matter how crude, they are his philosophy.
Therefore, as a philosophy cannot be avoided, it is incumbent on
one to attempt to make it as true and helpful as possible. The
psychurgic student must not leave so vital a matter to chance, but
should systematically determine his philosophy for himself; should
seek the original data and sources, and according to his Level,
think it out, influenced by others only so far as they lead him to
data that he may know for himself. Science, especially when
validated, teaches how to make rational choice within the nature of
experience, but one is constantly compelled to choose and act in
matters in which he has no such experience and no knowledge; and
then one acts at once according to his interpretation of the Cosmos,
which requires a philosophy.
By psychurgic laws the best lines of effort could be selected,
and upon the selective process could be brought philosophical data
validated to definitely known degrees. But out of a vast group of
validated lines of useful effort, one must still choose a few and
carry them out, and this choice cannot always be directed by
esthesis (feeling)—the esthesis will be the result of the
[page 378]
choice. It will be either desirable or not, and we cannot tell unless
philosophy is able to direct us. That is, a deliberate choice of lines
of effort depends on one’s philosophy or lack of it. This choice
will differ according as one is filled with benevolent altruism or
selfish egoism; whether one is a Christian or a Moslem, a scientist
or an uneducated person. This shows the vital relation of
philosophy to religion and of both to human progress.
It is the province of science to interpret Being so far as
knowledge goes, but we are compelled to live in Being even if our
knowledge covers only a small part of it; so it is necessary
constantly to act as if we knew all about it. Therefore we make an
unavoidable interpretation of the Known plus the Unknown plus
our relation to it—and this is philosophy.

When by his art of discovery Gates discovered cognosis, which

as a more fundamental mode of knowing is a scientific
epistemology, he began to consider this art a method applicable to
philosophy, or rather, he concluded, a method of philosophy and a
philosophy. The philosophies of the future will be directed toward
the acquisition of more mind (conscious structures and
Consciousness embodiments) in order to have a more completely
valid “constitution of the mind” and a better comprehension,
reasoning facility, and philosophizing ability by means of which to
discover and construct our unification of knowledge and to adapt it
perpetually to human progress. Philosophy is not a matter of
dialectic but of growth; not so much a question of universal truths
as man’s evolved mental ability to apply them logically and
practically and his ideating and cerebrating ability to discover
them.
While under this paideutic and sophic dominancy, he wrote
Volume I of “Outline of Psychurgic Paideutics,” in twelve
volumes, dividing it into three degrees of Studentship: (1)
Cognition, (2) Cognosis, (3) Sophics. Included were the
Studentship Lessons; examples from his diary of excursions of
discovery into sophics; and Symbols and Glossary. He defined
paideutics as the art of acquiring the knowledge, esthesias, and
urgations
[page 379]
belonging to any subject, enjoyment, or work. Paideutics was
divided into prepropaedeutics, propaedeutics, paideutics proper,
and superpaideutics. For each there was a branch of automathics
(self-learning), and pedagogics (teaching). This outline of the
Twelve Volumes remained his final classification of Psychurgy,
although various condensed versions were planned later when he
realized he would not have time to complete it. Future psychurgic
students would have to finish the task. One cannot read these
Studentship Lessons in Volume I without feeling inspired to do
better and live a better moral, ethical, and religious life, to develop
one’s abilities and genius-capacities as a duty and a privilege. The
reader is convinced that if the psychurgic student spent the energy
and time usually required for an education, he would succeed in
attaining a more complete self-expression, a more skillful vocation,
and a more useful and happy life.
By December 1909, under pressure of living expenses, Gates
felt compelled to abandon this sophic dominancy, which was
producing such a rich harvest of the knowledge he then most
needed. It reached its climax, in his opinion, with his discovery of
the Graded-Steps-Series method of research and validation. This
Disparate-Steps principle is immanent in all existence; through

every taxis run many series of gradations of steps that become a

guide to the validation of the data and a classification of that taxis.
Nature is built of unit wholes that aggregate into other unit wholes,
and these into others in per saltum order, giving terraces of
properties. This gradation series checks results of all other
methods of validation, and puts the finishing touches on the
psychotaxic method of validation (which consists in discovering
which data have not been inductively derived). It is also a method
for discovering.
There was much more to this line of discovery. He now felt
eligible to work along these broader lines, and by doing so many
new and important insights were opened up to him, thereby
establishing him in the Twelve Years’ work well toward a
permanent solution of all his problems. He expected sooner or
later
[page 380]
to take up his conative problem: the financial, legal, and social
establishment of the real and reorganized psychurgic work. If he
could take up his livelihood on the same high level, he was sure he
could greatly succeed. Maybe he would!
During this month, however, his mind simply shifted to another
phase of the dominancy (sophiurgy and telurgy). He incorporated
much new material in the manuscript under various subjects. It
had become a habit for him to rewrite his first memoranda,
hurriedly jotted down, just as soon as his mind stopped bringing
forth new ideas for the day, and then, soon after, to rewrite them
again so that peculiar phrases and allusions might be understood by
others from his standpoint, as well as to fish out certain additional
ideas and sidelights. First glimpses, he found, often contained
insights and vistas of importance that were apt to be overlooked
under the suggestion of the special lines of thought being
developed. There did seem to be a letup in his mentation, and he
concluded that the dominancy had ended, yet his mind did not drop
the subject nor take up any other. In a few days his mind gave
evidence by its ideas that it was beginning a possible new
dominancy. Would it be the conative one that he so longed to
start? The first attempt resulted in the paideutic dominancy, the
second in a sophic, and this new one, he hoped, would at last take
up the financial problem. But he was not yet to have that
satisfaction. Reading the signs, he must first spend time with the
larger conative, or telurgic, problem of the world as a whole (“As
if it were in more need of help than I,” he plaintively wrote.) The
problem of he psychurgic work was subordinate to the world
problem. Many years before he had resolved to accept for himself

only such results as he could achieve for the world. The whole
subject must be studied if he would understand his part.
Telurgy is the art of purpose-doing, of using the Self and
Person. One of its basic laws is specific functioning of organs
(cells, nerves, persons, worlds); each person has a natural place in
the world scheme as a whole, just as each cell has its place in an
organ; and insofar as he has important functions to fulfill,
[page 381]
he will have Levels, Uplifts, and Powers as a guide. There are
such complementary laws as Mentative Dominancy (a person’s
genius and social effectiveness increases as his dominancy
increases); Psychotaxic Content (his efficiency is directly
proportional to the accuracy, normality, and extent of his mental
content); Auturgic Dominancy (a person’s genius is efficient just
to the extent that it is untrammeled); Sociurgic Dominancy (a
person’s influence on affairs of his time depends largely on the
extent to which he organizes others cooperatively). If evaluated
incentives guide the followers of these laws, then the doing of the
work undertaken will lead to the further revelation they need. The
world problem reduces itself to Telurgy—to a psychotaxis of
human conation; to a psychurgic division of labor to be done when
and where most effective, with the earth and all mankind as the
immediate object of its care. The problem is arranging a validated
psychotaxis of conations of the whole earth and all that is going on
in it.
Only by a scientific study of the world’s conative problem
could he get the data of a whole natural domain of knowledge for a
psychotaxis—a whole group of self-related data to which he could
apply the newest methods of research and validation. In no other
way would the Graded Steps Series be disclosed; otherwise the
problem would be hopelessly complex. The new methods
resulting from his sophic dominancy were therefore conative, the
first new data for his coming dominancy. It was well he had
allowed his mind to take its course in sophics instead of his
planned one in livelihood.
He was already in the conative dominancy! he exulted.
The world’s conative problem is that of the World Process as a
whole, every line of conation being a factor in each and every
other line. Man’s conative problem is only one of the units, and is
the least unit that can be studied as a psychotaxic whole in starting
to study any individual’s problem. The world is engaged in a
conative struggle—a conatus and a conation; and parallel is a
series of geophysical developments. Man himself does not
comprise all this: all other living creatures are concerned, as

[page 382]
well as all geophysical and astronomical changes. All social units
and every kind of human and organic activity, studied in relation to
each other and to all else going on, is the world’s conative
problem. And to this Gates addressed himself, calling it the
Telurgic Problem because it was no longer a naive struggle for
existence but had become a self-conscious and purposeful series of
planned actions—a purpose—doing with purposes psychurgically
selected.
Every step since the previous May, he now realized, was the
shortest course to solution of the livelihood problem, which would
not be solved unless the establishment and maintenance of the
psychurgic work were also solved, which required that its relation
to other institutions be solved, which in turn required that he know
the relation of other units to all else going on in the world; that is,
psychurgy must handle the problem of the world’s telurgy if he
were to make a true adjustment of his work to its surroundings and
time. This was a ponderous step, he remonstrated, in order that he
could pay rent and live; but the world had no great interest in his
living expenses unless he thereby worked out psychurgy. To do
that required a large sum of money, and he must make an
adjustment to his time and place. The whole content of psychurgy
(all of science, arts, philosophy, and religion) was the first
mentative synopsis for the dominancy that would take the first big
step to solution of the world’s conative problem—the New Telurgy
for doing the practical things of everyday life—he concluded.
Out of this will arise the New Sociurgy, which extends its
scope beyond the limits of any one race, beyond humanity, beyond
even the limits of animal and plant life, to the whole earth and all
that is going on in the air, water, and on land. On any lesser terms
only a few factors would be considered. The world’s conative
problem is the only possible big application of sophiurgy.
“Am I happy!” Gates exclaimed. His livelihood problem was
transformed, was now an illustrative case of the New Telurgy—the
world’s telurgy—and his interest in that was immense, more than
any other thing. It was for this purpose that psychurgy came
[page 383]
into the world, to guide the world’s conative efforts. Business,
commerce, industry, government, were data in an all-
comprehensive science-art and philosophy-religion. “It seems too
good to be true,” he delightedly wrote; “maybe I am dreaming but
that is the meaning of my present step. The mind-process in me
has taken a wiser course than I planned.” The esthesic problem
would be solved with the conative, which is the problem of
achieving eunesthesias conatively.

He saw that the new psychurgic sociology would comprise the

psychologies of all creatures and include for the first time the
cognostic psychology. Hitherto sociologic treatises, even if they
sought to deal with the psychologic aspect, handled it as if man’s
psychology were the only one concerned. The one main factor of
cognocosmos had been omitted. Cognosis is the basis of kinship
between creatures, the one and only factor that explicates life.
There is one Process going on in the world: it is the growing earth,
and we are not the whole thing. The earth is growing geologically
and astronomically and chemically and botanically and
zoologically and psychologically and sociologically; and its
industries and commerce and government are mere symptoms of
the real process, momenta of its expression, and can be understood
only in connection with all other things that are going on
simultaneously as the earth-process, in a synurgic synthesis. In
such a psychotaxis the new method of research and validation will
guide to discovery and to plans of conation.
This solution of the world’s conative problem, Gates
considered fundamental: psychurgy, mind-using and
Consciousness-utilizing are the basic conations. But what he was
then seeking was the telurgic formulation of psychurgy as applied
to such cases as the livelihood of the psychurgic work. He was
dominant regarding the scientific data of conation; but after the
preliminary steps had been completed, he hoped to get dominant in
the actual acts of making money. Psychurgy is the conative art; its
principles were to be formulated as applied to the world, to the
race, to the country, to the psychurgic work, and finally to
[page 384]
himself. There was no other way to make a sure and lasting
success, of that he was convinced.
He considered the possibility of getting help from higher
sources. To attain its esthesias by conation, a creature needs
cognition: intellections of its body and environment, and
introspection of its inner feelings and states; and by psychurgy a
person may learn to discover through cognitive and cognostic
knowledge, he may at any time take the next step in his knowledge
by asking for it in the right and normal way. So far as Gates could
find out, this is the only kind of help man has ever received “from
heaven” by prayer. The price paid for an independent life is that
the person must do his own conating and become conscious of its
results; but life and consciousness are given him, he conates and
achieves esthesias as purposes, and by experience he associates
conscious states with things and acts; and thus arises cognitive
knowledge as a result of conation for guidance. But the
Consciousness by which he does this is cosmic and cognostic, and

he may at any time get more knowledge; it will tell him what to do
but will not do it for him. If he asks for more knowledge, he will
get it, but he must live that knowledge if he wishes to profit by it
through the esthesias attained. Experience is measured not by
years but by accumulated and validated facts applied by systematic
reflection to a purpose.
The old insights about geniuses as the world’s only revelators
had enlarged with the new views of telurgy. Any attempt at a
partial solution of the world’s conative problem that does not make
the finding and utilizing of the world’s little band of real
discoverers and thinkers one of its main problems will not be the
best one. Any scheme of reform that does not begin its public
work by an organized propagandization of putting the rudiments of
the world’s true scientific conceptions in the minds of the masses
by some proper method of instruction will find that its higher
teachings will have nothing to which to appeal except ignorance,
superstition, prejudice, theory, belief, and mysticism. If there is
not placed in these minds a “seeing-by-wholes”
[page 385]
conception of the sciences, arts, philosophy and religion, there will
be no foundation for insights into psychurgic conceptions. If the
masses do not see for themselves that every datum in our modern
knowledge has been toilsomely worked out by a few honest and
earnest thinkers, without direct help from Bibles and spirits, they
will not be prepared to approach the methods by which, alone, true
progress may be made.
“How I wish I might have the time immediately to begin
another psychurgic excursion into this high and holy sophic
dominancy,” Gates’ diary recorded, “now when I am so filled with
enthusiasm. If I could, I would carefully rearrange all the sophic
data in the Propaedeutic and in the Twelve Volumes, and
psychotaxically classify them. I would put everything else out of
mind, retire early, sleep well, get up early, keep in the open air as
much as possible, re-function the re-arranged data and perhaps
teach them to a pupil. I would most carefully classify every detail,
and the daily refunctioning would soon beget a central dominancy.
Then reconsciousing would in like manner beget a cognostic
dominancy of sophiologic data; the daily interest and enjoyment
would beget a sophiesic dominancy; and my daily doing of this
kind of work for the world’s sake would beget a sophiurgic
dominancy. A period would soon come when my mind would
again be sophically originative, creative, productive, receptive; and
many new insights would result. As soon as my mind quit
yielding, I would incorporate my new data into a new psychotaxic
inventory, re-function it and thereby gain more ideas and insights,

and then I would accentuate the mentative process by daily

dirigation to the functionally dominant structures and dominant
mental content relating to sophiology, and get further ideas and
insights. Then after re-arranging my inventory with recent results,
I would make a daily introspection of my total mental cognitive
content (separating entic and ectic factors) and introspectively
dirigate thereto, and thus take my highest cognitive step in
sophiology. Finally I would again rearrange my inventory of data
into a new mentative synopsis; I would secure ataraxy;
[page 386]
I would cognose my sophic mental content and isolate the
cognocepts from cognicepts and cognispects and then while fully
ataraxic and exalted, systematically re-aware that cognostic
content, confidently expecting a revelation from the highest source
to which I may aspire, expecting a wider view; and perhaps I might
find myself on the highest viewpoint, basking for a supreme hour
in the radiant splendor of a morning that is always dawning in
these world-scanning altitudes; stand for an hour or a year and get
a more extensive survey of the paths by which my beloved pupils,
with higher powers and wider scope than mine, may stand
regnantly efficient on higher levels than I have been able to
occupy.”
He learned some important lessons from the success of this
sophic dominancy. He was greatly stimulated by the concurrent
paideutic dominancy. He found that a systematic rearrangement of
familiar data and re-functioning for teaching would set up a
dominancy on that subject; and that there was no better way to start
one than by teaching the subject. His interest in these problems
was paramount; it was therefore a natural dominancy along lines of
predilective ability. Hence he was not easily distracted, although
he had enough provocation to have upset any other effort on
almost any other subject; but his goal was so great and his time so
short that he dared not be distracted.
During the year 1910 his mind, instead of taking up the much
desired conative dominancy of livelihood, merely shifted its
interest to another aspect of sophics, the self. He wrote his treatise
on Selves, Persons, and Cosms (a cosm may be considered
synonymous with organism). On the introductory page, to show
the importance long attached to this much misunderstood subject,
he set these quotations:
“Reverence Thyself”— Pythagoras

“Know Thyself”— Solon
“Know Thy Self”— Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad

“Know and reverence Consciousness, which underlies Self and

Person”— Psychurgy
[page 387]
He called this work Cognitelurgy—the doing portion of
cognition. It is the self that does things, using body and mind as a
tool to work on the environment to satisfy esthesias. How to
perform the necessary acts requires knowledge and skill, and
discovery of one’s natural purposes. A purpose that is normal to
any person cannot be invented, adopted, or forced; it must be
found in disposition and predilection.
He had completed his first exposition and turned to improving
its terminology, but his mind disapproved of this rewriting—
because, he assumed, his attention should have been devoted to his
livelihood. It made him nervous “to sit and see his mind bringing
forth another brood of mental children” when prudence required it
make a living. Even then in parturient throes of originative
mentation, he attained in an hour important new insights and
discoveries requiring the reorganization and rewriting of the entire
volume. He was now able to recast it from a higher level and a
more paideutic standpoint. The subject had grown so much greater
that he could not do otherwise than devote his entire workday to its
completion regardless of money matters. These discoveries not
only required rearrangement and additions but transfigured it to
form the framework for a better exposition of all the Twelve
Volumes—“they will rewrite psychurgy,” he wrote with delight.
Before he knew these new laws, there were a number of seemingly
insolvable dilemmas, incongruities, and hiatuses in the book. “I do
not know how many have been removed,” he noted excitedly, “but
as far as I have had time to think over hurriedly the subjects of
psychurgy, I find that all of these difficulties ‘have folded their
tents like the Arabs and as silently stolen away’!” His exposition
of cognistics, cognostics, and sophics would center upon these new
laws and be quite largely summed up in them.
“These are examples of the great laws of Universal Telurgy,”
he continued, “this day revealed to me, and with a knowledge that
still further revelations are awaiting. I am grateful. The joy of this
occasion is entirely beyond my cognitive expression. There is a
satisfaction in doing this work that transcends all cognitive
[page 388]
satisfaction. Again and again I have refrained from mentioning
this joyous happiness that is mine almost every morning that I
begin my mentative work, and often during the day—especially for
half an hour after I begin my writing out of my Message. This
satisfaction is the completest, the Approvals are the most

unqualifiedly approving of any experience of my life. My work

must be promotive of life—it must be well for me to do this, to
give such supreme joy.
“Do not give any mystical interpretation to the account of how
these discoveries were made,” he warned, “for I have not dwelt
upon the dominancy of invention-discovery which I created in my
mind. These laws were discovered because I had scientifically
regulated the conscious processes by which the data in my mind
were generalized and by which my mind naturally took the next
steps in its insights and uplifts. The exhilaration of the dominancy
placed me on a little higher Plane; the functional intensity of my
mind’s predilection admitted me to a new height of introspective
and cognostic experience. These coupled with what I already
knew, when handled by the intellective processes of analysis and
synthesis, constitute new knowledge for me. Moreover, my mind
is reciprocally an organ in the organism of the larger cosmos.”
Cognition cannot be understood by cognition alone, he
emphasized, otherwise the great thinkers would long ago have
understood it. Cognition must be looked down upon from a higher
level of knowing, for such is the law of insights. By means of
cognosis, cognition can be understood. Likewise cognosis is
essential to an understanding of selfhood, because, he found, the
real self dwells entirely outside the domain of cognition; to know
what cognition is and what the self is, cognosis must first be
experienced. By cognosing he discovered that it is the nature of
Consciousness per se to be self-active, and therefore it is the real
self. It is fundamentally urgative. One will know all this directly
and immediately and indubitably by cognosis. When the cognitive
selfhood is understood, then and not before can the
[page 389]
cognitive body and mind and personhood be understood, and then
a cognitive cosm will be comprehensible. When by a similar
procedure the pupil understands the cognostic Self in relation to its
Person and Mind and Environment and Cosm, then Telurgy will
begin to be seen in its true light.
“The center and circumference of psychurgy is telurgy. Of
what use is it? In achieving happy esthesias,” Gates wrote.
“Happiness does not consist in owning this or that valuable or
beautiful thing, or in having this or that friendship or love; it does
not consist in wealth or fame—it comes primarily from the use you
make of these things as means for fulfilling your predilective place
in the part of the world to which you belong; in doing your organic
part of the work of the World-Process by means of these things.
That they make you happy is a normal incident of that use.”

He found these subjects so peculiarly difficult to expound that

he expected only indifferent success. Many of his statements had
largely an allegorical value, true to those who had experienced the
subject, but, he feared, misleading to all others. He had to do the
best he could with cognitive language and speculative forms of
statement, or not attempt any explanation of these ultracognitive
subjects at all. It tried his courage to “the extremest verge” to
choose the former, he apologized.
His mood may be indicated by this expression from his chapter
on Superpaideutics: “As I enter the exposition of this subject, I
take off my hat, leave my shoes outside. I feel the inadequacy of
written words. Rather would I take a bath, put on clean clothes,
and go with you in the early morning to some sun-lit height and
talk until high noon. This subject is Holy ground. I wish to kneel
in reverence to The Consciousness which has eternally enthroned
Itself upon Existence, and at the same time I wish to stand erect in
the pride of being a participant in the Active Regnancy of The
Cosmos. With a full sense of the imperfections of this whole
exposition, humbly and joyously I lay before you this treatise of
Selves, Persons, and Cosms as a
[page 390]
preliminary sideglance at a subject about which further discoveries
are on the way.
“Hardly have I the serenity to hold my pen while I write these
words, so deeply am I always aroused when I approach the subject
of this Immanent Self-the most alluring of the Insights.”

[page 391]
CHAPTER 18
The Business Dominancy Lost
As I sat alone, by blue Ontario’s shore ...

—WALT WHITMAN
Elmer Gates often found it necessary to defend cognosis from

the assaults and misinterpretations of the mystically inclined;
perhaps nowhere more cogently than in the closing chapter of
Selves, Persons, and Cosms, part of which follows, on cognostic
methods versus mysticism. (Adapted.)
One of the main viewpoints of mysticism is that in some way

man may be told by the Most High what is true or not. It expects a
hand to reach down out of Heaven and guide man’s hand to write
sentences containing wisdom beyond his power. It thinks of the
Most High as a personal God, or Spirit, capable of feeling mercy or
vengeance toward man and of giving or withholding illumination.
One of its main methods is getting quiet and free from distractions
and in making one’s self religiously worthy. Its results have been
practically nil.
One of the main viewpoints of cognosis is that man may
scientifically study the nature of his own Consciousness by a
conscious faculty that is possessed by a new type of mind and thus
learn what is true of all Consciousness, whether in man or
[page 392]
God; and the truth about Consciousness, constituting its own
nature, underlies the nature of man and all creatures and even God.
It expects Consciousness to reveal itself to man by means of
Consciousness, and it expects the revelation to be the underlying
law of living beings of all orders in all worlds and times. It thinks
of Consciousness as the Most High, as immanent in the conatus of
the Existential Whole. Its method consists in cognosing
Consciousness. Its results constitute a whole new science
(cognostology) and a whole new art (cognosturgics) and a whole
new order of life and living things (cognobiosis). It furnishes a
criterion of truth, gives rise to a new synthetic science, and lays the
foundation of a new philosophy and religion. It reveals the nature
of Selfhood and Personhood.
Obviously the contrast is great; yet mysticism was vainly
looking for something like that which cognosis has revealed. It
looked by cognitive methods and expected cognitive results, which
we now know is impossible. The meditation of the mystic is not in

any way like the psychurgic method of re-functioning a

psychotaxic synopsis of data, or the reflective handling of thoughts
of the four or more orders, or like the psychurgic readings or like
cognosis of Consciousness. You will hardly believe to what extent
their meditation and intuition is a mere jumble of passing
impressions, unevaluated sentiments, speculations, and fancies
until you read their writings after having studied cognitechnics.
The whole content and method of cognosis is different.
Cognosis is as truly matter of fact as sulfuric acid or sunshine; it
can be explained and used and known. The alleged extreme
development of the meditative and intuitive faculties of mysticism
is not true; it develops fancy, reminiscence, reverie, imagination,
feeling, speculation, but not true meditation or intuition in the
psychurgic sense, as might be inferred from the unfruitfulness of
their methods and as may be proved by psychurgically trying them.
Psychurgy has proved that whatever exaltation may be attained by
self-abnegation or asceticism is due to the purposing that may
happen to be involved.
[page 393]
One of the psychurgic insights into myth and mysticism is that
the whole matter has been wholly cognitive. Cognosis is not
within the cognitive domain, and neither is it mysticism in any
form; it is naturalism in another and non-cognitive order of
existence. Cognosis does not dream or speculate—it cognoses, it
knows. If mysticism and speculation had discovered a world of
spirits and angels, the minds of these would have offered for study
just the same problems as the minds of mortals. Admit the whole
claim of mysticism and it would have added to the biological
domain only a few more species of living things; namely,
excarnate things, whose minds still need to be studied and in
whose minds Consciousness will still be regnant. “The other
world” of mysticism, spiritism, and religions is not the “other
world” of cognosis: the real problems offered by both worlds are
of Consciousness and its kingdom. If this distinction is fully
grasped, it will be seen that mysticism and cognosis are not
applicable to the same category of being.
Mysticism as a method has never made a discovery, but the
mystic is also a man who now and then has attained insights and
made discoveries by usual mental methods. So far as I have been
able to study the history of the sciences and arts, I have found that
every discovery and insight and work of creative beauty has been
produced in a natural way by the mentating and consciousing
processes in a man. Until the discovery of cognosis all has been
wrought by natural methods; with its advent come supermental
methods, but they are natural, and not supernatural. Cognosis is a

child not of mysticism but of modem science, especially

psychurgy, and still more of psychurgic psychology. Cognosis is
not a dream of the nighttime of mysticism but of the morning of
scientific method. Mysticism did not get any scientifically
validatable facts as a result of its method; in four thousand years it
has not yielded as much knowledge of the subject to which it so
laudably aspires as may be obtained from a single hour’s cognosis.
The self-hypnotization of quietistic ecstasy is as unlike cognosis as
a nightmare is unlike a well-planned laboratory experiment.
[page 394]
Over and over it seemed that these mystics were about to find
something of value, but they were looking in the wrong direction
and by wrong methods. Yet it was to a new world that they
aspired, and if they had caught a glimpse of the new world of
cognosis, it would mightily have satisfied them. Again and again
mystical writers seem about to say something, yet it ever remains
unsaid. Mysticism is not a method, it is an aspiration for one. It
has been tried and found wanting, but it is a monument to the
deathless longings and unappeased hunger of the human mind—
“an everlasting hope.”
By mysticism I do not mean merely mystery. There is as much
that is hidden and mysterious to the scientist as to the mystic, but
the scientist has a different attitude and studies by different
methods and gets a different kind of result. The mystic speculates
about the hidden, using suppositions, autohypnotic emotions, and
adopted sentiments as data, while the cognostic scientist cognoses
Consciousness and from the indubitable cognotions thereby
obtained, synthesized with the whole domain of cognitive and
cognostic science, he discovers conditions and facts about the
ultracognitive. The mystic cultivates a forced faith and accepts it
as a datum, while the cognotist cognoses that Consciousness per se
which lies under and above cognition, and attains a body of
indubitable data of a new science relating to another and hitherto
unknown order of existence. The mystic guesses about God and
accepts plausible explanations and traditions and human testimony
about the “soul”; while the cognotist directly and immediately
knows that which is the fundamental factor in all conscious beings,
including the Supreme Being, and knows that factor,
Consciousness, in such a way that Selfhood and Personhood are no
longer mysterious souls, spirits, astrals, excarnates, egos, but actual
living identities that he knows better than anything else whatever.
During all the centuries past, mysticism has not discovered a single
unquestionable fact or insight into the problem, whereas in a few
years cognosis has produced a body of transcendently important
results, of which this book is a sample, and

[page 395]
of which almost the whole of psychurgy is evidence . . . .
Such were some of Gates’ conclusions.

But the sophic dominancy produced other important results.
By December 1910, the esthesic criterion for the Twelve Years’
work was fully in his possession. It transcended naturalism. He
recorded,“These are great steps, but no step is greater to a
psychurgic student than when there is paideutic need for a step,
and it will come if not prevented.”
On the twenty-fifth, at 5:30 A.M., he recorded that the latest
and best fruits of this dominancy were new insights into the
chaotic subject of esthesis, giving a psychotaxis which showed that
to each unit and class of units of intellections and urgations there
should be a corresponding esthesia. Each class is capable of
interacting to produce definite esthesias, a few of which have been
experienced by the human race; but many of these still remain
unknown or non-existent. He now had the formula for discovering
and creating new esthesias and new intellections and new
urgations. “Truly, if this is carried out,” he wrote enthusiastically,
“psychurgy will outclass all the wonders of the ancient and modern
world. I have not noted all the insights and discoveries that have
crowded into my mind on December twenty-fifth from 8:30 A.M.
to 5 P.M. and especially all day the twenty-sixth from 5 A.M. to 10
P.M. during which I sat at my desk and worked at highest pressure
and speed under the influence of this dominancy. I have not
referred to my yet incomplete but far-reaching insights relating to
music; to scores of important changes in nomenclature and over a
hundred new definitions in the glossary; and others.”
Gates wrote many times of the World Worker; his lifework was
dominated by that point of view. In his treatise on Selves, Persons,
and Cosms he described some attributes of this World Work and of
World Workers in detail. Some of his thoughts on this subject
were, generally speaking, that the whole earth
[page 396]
and all that lives in it is a functioning unit, and as a historically
progressive development it may be best understood with its parts
organically related and reciprocally interactive. There are times in
the development of any nation when certain lines of evolutionary
growth seem to culminate, with several periods of development
along different lines; and when such a functioning is occurring is
the time to carry out purposively that kind of effort. In any period
of special development there are generally certain persons whose
abilities most influence, characterize, and direct that era; each who

contributes for the sake of helping that kind of progress and

thereby the world’s progress is a World Worker. A person whose
genius or other predilection is contributory to the development of
any science, art, philosophy or religion as a lifework, having
accepted his mission in trust and administering it for the world’s
weal and his own happiness—he is a World Worker. If he is of the
new cycle type of mind that can cognose, he is a psychurgic World
Worker.
The total work of the world is so vast that it requires all its
people, and much that ought to be done is not done. Each race,
nation, country, and individual must do its special part. The
progress of the world depends not alone on the voluntary efforts of
man but more largely on numerous factors and vast forces lying
outside his plans and efforts, subconsciously present; and also on
forces in the Cosmos by which he lives and has his being. Of the
voluntarily directed efforts there are many lines that must all go on
equally to avoid one-sided development.
There are certain factors underlying all lines that if promoted
will simultaneously direct and develop each. First, mental
activities underlie all human effort; so if man gets more mind and
learns how to use it better, every other line of development will be
augmented. It is the fundamental method. “There is reason to
believe,” Gates hopefully concluded, “that the work outlined in the
Twelve Volumes is truly a World Work. The development of
psychurgy is in the line which might naturally be expected.”
To help him carry out this World Work more efficiently,
[page 397]
he made a synthesis in his confidential “Consensus Report for the
Twelve Years’ Work,” written in 1910, of recently completed
results of all psychurgic methods of judging applied to the
purposes, methods, and goals of his lifework, utilizing fully the
judgments of his associates. They agreed on the importance of
psychurgy as a new era in life itself. He stood ready to join them
in realizing more fully the impact of the World Work in which they
were engaged, continuing with “renewed enthusiasm and a more
strenuous determination.” He concluded that during the eleven
years remaining of the Twelve Years’ work he must complete the
one main purpose of his life: writing and imparting his message of
psychurgy—the Evangel of Evolving Life as he had characterized
it thirty years before. During the days and hours that now and then
he could spare he would carry on the contributing work of making
a living for the psychurgic work and for himself, and help his
assistants gain theirs; also the secondary work of reorganizing the
World Work. This other work would become primary after
completion of his main purpose. If opportunity continued and the

world crisis was not postponed, he would make a deal on his war
inventions.
During the Twelve Years’ work he expected a special message
for and to Womanhood-Manhood to develop, and in some not yet
determined way it would arrive at a special work for woman. A
few women must grasp the new meanings and “keep the vestal
fires of the World Work burning until the whole of Womanhood is
enlightened,” then seek for more light for the next step.
Gates realized that he would have time for no more than his
two pupils and that even for them it would become more limited.
His two unpretentious Twelve Years’ work pupils, as he called
them, would have to suffice as personal helpers; one specially
fitted and trained for connecting the Thirty-three Years’ work with
the Twelve Years’ work, the other connecting the latter with the
Seven Years’ work. It was perhaps significant for the
Womanhood-Manhood work that both were young women. One,
Marian Lee Patterson, he judged as having the
[page 398]
requisite ability and high sophic genius to master the Twelve
Volumes from the intellectual and sophic standpoints; she was of
high exposition ability, her ability in sophics was perhaps greatest
of any woman, and if she mastered scientific method, she would be
truly capable of leadership. In a few years, however, she forsook
the Studentship and married, and raised a fine family. Students
signed a contract not to publish or teach without written
permission, and the manuscript was only lent to them. Gates
followed this practice to prevent diluted versions of his work from
appearing.
The other pupil, Pearlie, as typist and secretary for fifteen years
had too many other things to do with domestic and financial affairs
to receive much teaching. She had given him so much real help,
however, and such incomparable loyalty to the work that she was
fulfilling one important part of her world mission. In her
trusteeship of the Cognobiotics department and in her religious and
personal character she was firmly embedded in the work; and she
continued with it.
The work as outlined was more than he could finish without
ample means and a few competent helpers. Of these there were
too few; only his two pupils could be depended on. If his best
years, which were rapidly passing, should be gone before
completion of what he may have been able to accomplish, the
result, in the opinion of his associates, “would be a deplorable
tragedy to humanity.”
Indications were that the psychurgically discovered world
crisis was no longer far away and unless forestalled would

culminate in a world calamity, making procrastination for him no

longer permissible. The contributory work of making money as
abundantly and as fast as possible thus had for the next year or two
importance commensurate with his main purpose. This world
crisis was not war, he foresaw—though it might be a
consequence—but a greater danger: the world’s greatest danger as
he saw it was the rule of pseudognosis, or false knowledge.
In this Consensus Report he prognosed that he would not
undergo senile degeneration; and there was reasonable hope,
[page 399]
considering his heredity and habits, that his mentatively effective
life would not fall short of the three-score and ten. But this would
not be quite long enough; consequently he must devote all his time
to the main work. Wasted time and attention would be
unwarranted negligence. But an ideal psychurgic life implied a
psychurgically developed society, and until then he could expect to
devote much energy to combating unfavorable conditions.
Diagnostic and prognostic symptoms and events indicated that his
mind was entering the great exaltation of cognitive and cognostic
functioning constituting the Twelve Years’ dominancy so long and
so eagerly anticipated. Consequently his whole attention and
subconscious and conscious life would be almost completely
withdrawn from all else for weeks at a time. He was at that age
when he could no longer depend on his bodily power of resistance
to overwork or overstrain, especially emotional, so he would have
to conserve his vital energy.
The report’s final judgment was that the only vital unsolved
problem of method was how to give enough attention to the great
dominancy in order to succeed fully, and also to become dominant
on finances. Beyond all others, his best opportunity was the
attainment of an urgative financial dominancy for a short time (a
year or so) in connection with the subject matter of the Twelve
Years’ dominancy. To do this without too much interference was a
problem for his experience and the art of discovery to solve, but
his increasing skill and occupation with cognosis was to make it
difficult.
For instance, his diary on May 10, 1910, records one of his
“most important and pregnant notes.” It comported well with the
Twelve Years’ work being the cognostic period of his life, with a
cognostic study of cognosis. Some of this note follows: “Awoke
with ten minutes of crystal clear vision, such as I often have had
and which I count among my happiest and best moments. This
morning, however, I caught meanings which have escaped my
understanding. I insighted a much larger group of topics, they

were classified and related to the all-important financial problem,

just what I wanted. The new meaning is:
[page 400]
these are not cognitive in origin and are not so enregistered. I
deem these very important points. My insight was most nearly
what I wanted, but I never remembered it, although a feeling or
impression remains like knowledge of a great presence. I feel I
have had a very great experience and seem to know (how, I do not
know) that the whole content is fully remembered by the Cognostic
Self. Judging by the past I may again have the same experience
and may cognitively enregister and remember it.
“I ask my pupils to accept this note as a bit of very important
experience, recorded without exaggeration or disparagement of any
point; IT TOOK PLACE, just as I have told it. It is not dreaming,
vagary, reverie, or fancy; not the emotive glamour of a dream. I
have been too close a student of these phenomena to be in the least
mistaken. The foregoing note is one of the important documents of
human progress. I may fail to carry my exploration into that new
domain any further, but I want you to know that this new domain is
there, and that it is a new Cosmic outlook and inlook—to things
which cognition cannot perceive, events which dreams have not
imagined—the new, glorious, supernal realm of the
Cognocosmos!”
Later that same day the record continued: “It seems after all
that it does not matter whether I get the contents of the classified
insights or not, because there in the Cognostic Self lie all such
knowledges, accessible to the psychurgic students of the future;
there lies the only kind of help man can get from sources outside
cognition. This is the ‘help from heaven,’ from a source higher
than himself; it is a problem of the interaction of the cognitive and
cognostic Self, and probably involves the attainment of conscious
continuity of personal identity.
“I am deeply and solemnly convinced that I am even now on
the direct path to a knowledge whereby man may direct conscious,
and consciously-intended, help from the superhuman, from the
Highest. I am too much impressed to allow any freedom of
rhetorical expression. I am firmly convinced that the problem of
attainment of personal conscious continuity of identity after
[page 401]
death can be solved by the method into which I have entered.”
But how to get down to earth and its financial problem?
Maybe it would not be best for his mind to become dominant on
anything else, he pondered; it had been dominant for forty years on
mind and consciousness, and would doubtless remain so. He was

aware from the standpoint of the Naturistic Plane of psychurgy that

enforced dominancies were not approved, as natural predilections
and powers would be obstructed, yet he desired a livelihood
dominancy. To be efficient his mind, he found, had to follow its
own predilections, impulses, and periodicities.
Hoping to engender such a dominancy, in 1911 Gates made
another of his occasional summaries in an analysis of periods of
his lifework as steps in the development of psychurgy. The Thirty-
three Year period (which closed with Chevy Chase) was supposed
to be a study of intellections, but led into systematic study of
esthesias and conations (urgations). As he progressed he found
that intellections comprised more than a knowledge of objective
things, and included intellective knowledge of his own subjective
world, of esthesias (feelings, appetites, emotions, sentiments) and
of different kinds of volitional effort collectively termed urgations
(conations, boulations, relations). Thus he was led to study
introspects of intellections of objective and subjective things—and
as a result, the whole domain of cognition. This was the cognitive
period, during which he discovered and formulated the cognitive
branch of psychurgy, leading to a cognitaxis and an organization of
cognitive endeavors called cogniturgy; it was used to make a
cognitive study of the sciences, arts, philosophy, religion, and
practical affairs, of the esthesic arts, and of those who practiced
and applied them. A cognitive study was also made of cognosis,
and now in the Twelve Year period cognosis would more fully
study itself. This period, entered into sometime before leaving
Chevy Chase, soon resulted in a series of insights and groups of
data about the cognistic self, with deeply felt impulse-to-do and
leading and purpose to carry on a more special study
[page 402]
of cognosis and sophics—to allow Consciousness to give a more
complete account of itself.
He estimated it would require about twelve years to rewrite the
twelve volumes and impart them wholly to a sufficient number of
pupils so they could adequately interpret, by their knowledge and
lives, the written message. At one volume per year to write, to
teach a pupil, for further thought, and other reasons, he estimated
that a Twelve Year period would be needed during which time he
should enter a different dominancy and complete its work, then
take up those that would follow.
Up to this time the art of discovery as applied to urgation
resulted in discoveries but not new powers or practical applications
to livelihood. Early in 1909 results had begun to relate to his life’s
purposes, and during the sophic dominancy lasting to 1911 there
was a growing tendency to a telurgic dominancy; but the attempt to

apply method to making money always failed. He came closer to

the real problem when he began to realize that a man’s predilective
work should be the source of his livelihood, for only thus would he
avoid wasting time from his work. He had never known how to
apply the art of discovery to business. But he continued his
attempts with further discoveries about sophics, some inventions,
the long sophic dominancy, and finally an actual discovery of the
method of applying the art of discovery to urgation. He now knew
how! Heretofore his psychotaxis of business urgation had been
intellective data and results were more such data. They were not
the right kind, and he was surprised that it took over a third of a
century to realize it. He now knew that for actual urgative results
he must use a psychotaxis of Impulses-to-do, Leadings, Achieved
Results, Incentives, Purposes, Opportunities, Assumed
Obligations, and Insights relating to his predilections and genius-
capacities, sophically alethifying these data and applying other
psychurgic practices. The result would be new and better such
happenings and urgings that would lead him to do what his whole
mind and consciousness found best under the circumstances.
Maybe after
[page 403]
all, he hoped, despite his distaste for business and lack of facility
and time, he would be able to make money by doing his main
work.
In addition to the Twelve Years’ work he now outlined the
Seven Years’ work as devoted to philosophy-sophiology, a
synthesis of the cognitive and cognostic sciences and their
interpretation; a Five Years’ work devoted to religion; and a Three
Years’ work devoted to superpaideutics.
Near the close of his first period of youthful mentation, under
the first flush of excitement of his purpose, he had foreseen that it
would require at least half a century to carry out the work
demanded by that purpose, and it had seemed so far away, the
labor so great, the problems so difficult. “Forty years have
passed,” he wrote in the analysis of 1911; “I am no longer so
young a youth, but the splendid fervor and zeal of that time is still
mine to enjoy; it has even a greater eagerness for the further
periods that await. I am now fifty-two years old, with two years of
the Twelve Years’ work accomplished. Owing to the Disparate-
Steps method of research and validation, to an improved
symbolotechny, and my growing skill with dominancies, I insight
that I will be able to commence each of the successive periods
before the preceding one has been completed, say in ten years,
provided no time is lost. But time lost in livelihood struggles must

be added, so this work may be completed in fourteen years by

1925.
“Then I will be free to do as I please a little while before I go!”
In October 1910, Gates had moved into the comfortable house
rented in the Mt. Pleasant section of northwest Washington, D. C.
He was determined to solve the livelihood problem in the next two
years, fearing that otherwise it would never be solved. He wrote
out his principles of livelihood and business by which he hoped to
finance the work, including the new method of research whose
application he now saw as the most important factor in modern
business, also incorporating his new Teacher
[page 404]
and Pupil methods of utilizing inventions. A definite start seemed
likely when a deal was made for some minor inventions, with
option on a larger one.
During the last months of the year he completed much writing:
300 pages on Cognitelurgy (including Selves, Persons, and
Cosms), Cognobiotics, Business, Graphotechnics, Religiotechnics,
and Symbolotechnics; the Glossary; business prospectuses; and
chapters in Volumes I and IV. This writing dominancy carried
over into the next year. January 1 found him rewriting the
Glossary and SP&C. On January 8, believing it almost completed,
he worked eagerly nearly all night, beginning early next morning
with little breakfast. By 11:30 A.M., while finishing, he was in
physiologic panic, with the “trembles.” On the tenth he wrote the
Postcript to Book Fourth and added some definitions to the
Glossary. During the afternoon he was deeply stirred by a unique
feeling of having too much pride to do anything that
Consciousness would not approve; he felt as never before that
Consciousness is a judge of the most sublime dignity, so that he
would be ashamed to let it witness any baseness of his self or
person, and that its approval is of most concern in this life. He felt
Consciousness as an ever-present witness, knowingly watching
him.
The eleventh and twelfth found him still at work an SP&C,
page after page of almost wholly original matter at which he had
been writing sixteen hours daily. “A thousand years from now,”
he exclaimed, “there will be those who will fully understand its
wondrous outlook and inlook.” Out of this subject and as part of it
his new view arose of the problem of life after death and
immortality, which subject he named cognobiotics. And so on
through the month: on the twenty-ninth he devoted fourteen hours
to symbolotechnics; on the thirty-first he discovered the basis of a
physiologico-acoustical orthoepy and made a few inventions. No
money was at hand or coming in. How he lived through those

months he did not know, but he got the means somehow from
week to week. On February 8 he finished constructive thinking
and writing of Volume I and Book Fourth of
[page 405]
Volume IV, and concluded he must make money and drop
everything else. He considered these two years since coming to
Washington in many ways his best, and he fully approved of the
work done. By March 3 he was “temporarily” through with this
long writing dominancy. His main purpose was to write and
impart his Message, organize its perpetuation, and continue
development of psychurgy; next to carry on laboratory con amore
research; then livelihood—as always, last.
On his birthday May 6, 1911, the diary stated: “Just fifty-two
years ago I began my cognitive experience upon earth. My life has
been an almost continual struggle for means for researches and
thought in my outer and inner laboratories, although few
experimentalists have ever made as much money for purely
noncommercial purposes. [His researches cost well over $1 1/2
million.] I have been so continually engrossed with psychurgy that
I could not pay sufficient attention to anything else. If I cared
enough I could make money, but keep on writing with none. How
can I do it? But for the past few weeks I have for the first time
been looking at the situation more squarely, with less illusion and
over-enthusiasm, and have concluded that I can settle my
livelihood problem by psychurgic methods, but it will require a full
eighteen months to work through the business dominancy into
which I seem to be entering.”
By June he expressed his duty not merely to make a livelihood
but vigorously to apply psychurgy to it, using all his achieved
results as tools, and felt this deeply as an urgative era in his life.
He concluded “as a father to his family, so I would like psychurgy
to have the world for its family, considering its good unselfishly;
and as I would adjust myself to promote the welfare of my children
so I would adjust my vocation to promote the good of my
community and my own growth.”
He foresaw that the result of the dominancy on business would
not be a fortune but the fundamental methods for the livelihood of
the psychurgic work and its pupils. His mind was approaching a
real mentative dominancy on business for the first time. He even
began to like the subject, and daily added
[page 406]
data to his mentative synopsis; he was ready to get a psychotaxis in
mind and get dominant with results of a high order. It made him
tremulous to anticipate a real dominancy on the subject at which he

had labored so long, one for which he had the least training and
ability. He could hardly wait!
Gates considered 1911 one of his most originative years, with
his mind active to the “very limit of its powers.” Among the
prominent achievements of that year he placed his War for Peace
program based on his war inventions. Formerly he had looked to
those war inventions as the source of a private fortune, but later
dedicated them to his researches. (He had intended to set aside the
proceeds from certain inventions for his personal livelihood—for a
home and education for his children, for recreation, and for
insurance in old age.) The year also gave unabated progress of his
writing dominancy. Inventively it was an effective year, with
improvements on almost every invention and an average of one
new invention every two weeks. He wrote three thousand pages of
typewritten manuscript first in longhand, then rewritten before
being copied, and later summarized in nine hundred pages. In
paideutic work it was a time of adjustment and symptom-study and
subconscious assimilation. It was a trying year financially, but he
was growing more cognostic.
In September, W. F. Kyle, who had been writing to him since
May because of a news article read ten years before, began to play
an active part in business negotiations. He remained a faithful
friend for the rest of Gates’ life.
By January of the new year 1912, Gates needed the strongest
self-control to keep from hurrying the subconscious stage that
should always follow a dominancy. Nothing was more detrimental
to highest human development, he found, than an uninterrupted
cramming of knowledge, or getting new insights without digesting
them and waiting for growth to pass the adjustment-stage into
useful action. He was too well trained as a psychurgist to
overmentate in either of the two ways he recognized: that constant
brooding on a problem when the mind does not have enough data
would produce nervous prostration and
[page 407]
monomania; and that continuing a dominancy even after several
months of unremitting labor—and after fatigue has set in—would
not allow the dominancy to subside when desired.
He was convinced he was about to come into his main and
fullest powers, and that he had never used his highest ability,
especially in business affairs. Leadings, previsions, impulsions,
and “Decrees” were becoming more definite and dominant,
especially between dominancies, and more reliable; that is, he felt
strongly that he “must or must not”— not a moral “ought” but a
special kind of unique esthesia that he introspectively knew to be a
reflex, and subconscious, state. It often amounted to complete

inhibition, and long afterward he found that the feeling had been
right. It had taken years for this attainment, which he would need.
In late January he was still writing ideas every day about the
synthesis taking place in his mind: that heuremics (the art of
inventing) and heuretics (the art of discovering) were part of a
larger taxis of heuric subjects that he called heurotechny—the art
of attaining the new in knowing, feeling, and doing. (See the
appendix for the taxonomy of heurotechny.) During the next ten
days, working fourteen to sixteen hours daily, he developed this
subject “amazingly” as a psychotaxic whole and in its relations to
psychurgy. Livelihood and business and the fine arts became
subdivisions. World Work was coordinate with Cooperative and
Synmentic Sociurgy. By its degree of development heurotechny
then belonged in the Twelve Volumes. Finishing his first complete
writing, he rated it “a good piece of work.”
According to this new psychotaxis, the attainment of the new
in knowing and feeling is an urgative problem (a purpose-doing),
as truly as the new in creative work. Discovery is not primarily an
intellective problem, but an urgative one. The intellect is a tool
used by conation (urgation) in achieving purposes to attain
esthesia. He found this point of view, which completely reversed
the academic attitude, very useful. But especially significant,
livelihood and business became one of the classes of heurotechny,
thus maintaining his mind’s urgative bent,
[page 408]
and outlining his plan of utilizing pupils in the Teachers and Pupils
Association to mutual advantage through invention in supporting
the work financially. This treatise was a paideutic exposition of
heurotechny, which, from then on, he considered the most useful
and important of all the psychurgic arts.
He realized with regret that if he had mentated the Chevy
Chase situation ten years before as he now could with these
heurotechnical methods, he would not have gotten into debt and
would have avoided the resulting slump in spirits that depressed
him for several years.
By late February his new outlook convinced him that all his
previous plans had been wrong, because they were not con amore
and because his associates were not paideutically selected. It was a
great satisfaction that his business thinking and writing came at
this opportune time. Every step in the new heurotechnic business
method would be based on a scientific study of all the needs
(cognistic, cognostic, sophic) of people, and not just their financial
needs. The great Uplifts and Powers, the moral exaltations and
ethical personings, would bear with full force on the commonest of
everyday undertakings; every transaction would be used as an

entering wedge for the propagandization of the work. Industry,

commerce, livelihood, and business have been in all ages by far the
most potent factor in civilization, and will continue for a long time
to be the major part of the world’s activity. A favorable
impression made by honorable business transactions will lead to
personal relationships that will open the mind to other matters of
common interest; if these are based on exact knowledge and honest
interest, the rest will be easy. “O the relatedness rapport of several
hours following this insight! The strength of the impulses, the
inexorableness of the desire in which my whole nature has
spoken.” In heurotechnical business method Gates foresaw not
only the self-support of the work but the method of propaganda
and further organization. This organization of pupils was to be the
key to solution of the world’s economic problem. So ran his new
outlook.
[page 409]
On February 28 he spent fifteen hours on heurotechny. He was
getting into one of the best dominancies of his life, and practically
the most useful—an urgative one! A good long one, too, for it had
been growing since January 5. He began to feel again his full
power to deal harmoniously with people and purposes. He hoped
nothing would happen to upset this dominancy.
On March 1 after writing from 4 A.M. to 1 P.M. and while
resting, he had the annoying and tiring apprehension of sorrow, of
something gone wrong. The next day he wrote for fourteen hours
on heurotechny; the dominancy was moving to an imperative place
in his life; “it thrilled with its greatness like a great presence” as it
took hold with the strength of his first cognostic or sophic
dominancies.
During the past twelve months his mind had produced over
three thousand new ideas on twenty different subjects, but mostly
on heurotechny. He was able to digest only part, that relating to
livelihood and business; but in him, for the first time, was a
dominative urgic impulsion to a grasp of his whole business career
and final settlement of its financial problem!
But on March 4 (1912) the terse, poignant record in the diary
read: “The Bad News.”
From the brief account of the final steps in the conception of
the psychurgic livelihood and business method, given in diary form
in his treatise on Heurotechny, the sorrowful entries continued:
“March 6: Not a new idea since the 4th; have been too full of
the acute shock and the dull ache of sorrow. Is there no hope for
my dominancy? Alas! there are times in the lives of our friends
when they know not what they do. Why should the World-Process
permit its most patient worker to be wounded while in its service?

Seventy-two long, hard, weary hours, brain sore, physical pain in

my heart—a culminating dominancy of practical affairs and high
discovery suddenly broken just as it was reaching its best
efficiency, perhaps irretrievably lost! “My glorious and rising
heururgic dominancy, for which I have.
[page 410]
waited over a third of a century and definitely striven for two and a
half years has apparently been abruptly broken off by a cruel,
heartless, uncalled-for blow just where I was weakest. A woe too
great for tears has unnerved me, causing pain at my heart and
apprehension. After repeated trials I have utterly failed to resurrect
my dominancy. I find it impossible to ward off the crushing
emotion of this knockout. While I was achieving thirty to fifty
new ideas daily the upward curve of my dominancy stopped short.
Loss of sleep and appetite and worries about money are running
me down rapidly.
“March 9: Made a long and determined effort to re-awaken my
dominancy with no success. I regret its loss more than the Chevy
Chase properties, or anything else I have ever lost. It seems really
gone, but the hurt is less than that of the bad news that caused it.
“March 11: Too grieved even to do drudgery work at writing.
Maybe my bad news will destroy something lower and bring
something higher in my affairs, as nearly every sorrow in my life
has done. Can so true an achievement really be lost?
“March 14: I am harassed and worried about losing so much
time. The ache persists. There are a few indications of being able
to return to paideutic work. A vague and gradually growing
awareness that what I seem to have lost is not lost. But eleven
days have passed without any symptom of my heurotechnic
dominancy. Never before has one stopped so suddenly; it was
destroyed in a moment. All I have left is a heart injury amounting
to emotive trauma; injury to my health; and unreadiness for the
fifteenth with its business opportunity.
“March 15: How can I afford to wait? I can look back and see
that if I had not been so overworked and busy and financially
worried, not so true to the rising dominancy, I might have paid
attention to certain things which would have prevented this
cataclysm of my mental life, might have supplied that lack in
myself and corrected that wrong in others. As I dare not take up
the reorganization work except under the
[page 411]
aegis of a dominancy of the right kind I will have to wait. Alas, it
is wasting away some of the remaining years which should be

devoted to other things. I am somewhat consoled by symptoms

that the bad news will soon end in adjustments on a higher plane.
“I settled the practical method of making a livelihood and
income for the work in the T & P application of heurotechny to
business. The bad news was the result of a mistake and it is yet an
active danger to all concerned. Such things shorten my life, strike
at my weakest point, the increasingly injurious effect of strong
emotion on my heart.
“March 16: Slept three hours, but very tired and heart-sore; am
waking up to the bitterness of a certain cruelty and to the
uncalledfor nature of the bad news. I am in danger of feeling bitter
resentment—or of the highest exaltation. The whole affair from
the beginning of Mayer’s instigated injustice, to the last kick of the
Chevy Chase trouble, was unfair; and so was this bad news, for I
was doing my duty to others without recompense and at a great
personal sacrifice for their good. If carried any further I may find
no more forgiveness in me, and that would be bad for me and for
my receptiveness. One practical conclusion is that dominancies
should be guarded; they are the most important event in a
psychurgist’s life.
“After a siesta of a few moments I awoke with a feeling of a
happy ending, except for the lost dominancy—the only main one I
ever lost. During one I faced a great danger and lost a fortune but
the dominancy did not even grow weaker. Another lasted through
ten days of a severe illness during which I expected one of my
children to die, but the functioning abated only a little.
“Feel better about the bad news. At least two persons will be
ultimate gainers and it will bring a Greater Person into my affairs.
The real hurt is the attitude that permitted it in those who did it.
[page 412]
“March 19: I will survive, but if I had not lost my dominancy I
would now wisely and efficiently be taking a great step in the T &
P moneymaking affairs. I feel a danger from arising resentment
which I hope I can suppress. I feel like utterly abandoning the
Thirty-three Years’ associational work, except those that the
Twelve Years’ work will absorb, and asserting myself for my own
rights and fair play and for the work, even if a few will be losers.
“I remember during the dominancy I saw that I must reorganize
the associational work on the basis of the new-type mind; that the
Seven Years’ work will synthesize the Thirty-three Years’ work
and the Twelve Years’ work; and then the Five Years’ work will
sociurgically apply it. The Three Years’ work will be
metapaideutic, including a summing up of cognobiotics. I realized
that real loyalty apart from self-interest is not normal to the pre-
psychurgic stage of human development; self-interest still

dominates. I now know that early in life I had a premonition

which should have been interpreted as the Twelve Years’ work of
reorganizing the psychurgic work, and that in later previsions I saw
the personurgic basis of the Twelve Years’ work.
“April 2: During the past fifteen days the bad news situation
has painfully persisted; my mind has been dazed as from an
anesthetic, but now indications are optimistic with reference to one
group of persons concerned. I see it was a big mistake in action
and attitude due to a misinterpretation, aggravated by the usurping
effects of a functionally-difficult next step and a dominancy, and to
phylogenetic survivals. Then occurred an inhibition, in the person
of those concerned, of every line of functional activity except those
required for the next step (of T & P affairs), and the indications are
that great things will develop if the persons are big enough. The
inhibition was made dangerously worse by adverse suggestion and
other things, and it is temporary except in the damage caused—but
if that is the price, let it be paid!
[page 413]
[The bad news? Its details were never disclosed in the diary,
surely to protect the names of the persons involved.]
“I see that the T & P is to be fundamentally a personurgy,
which is proof that the 12-7-5-3 Years’ work is not a series of
successive steps but blended into one step, and by overlapping
should be completed in nine years by 1921. I know by insights
during the recent dominancy that my greatest efforts and
discoveries are yet to come and that the greatest success easily
within reach will be attained only on a personurgy basis. I see I
have suffered permanent injury to health, and a great financial loss
in not getting things started, but if everyone concerned is big
enough I will gain greatly in another way.
“I consider myself a pupil of the Heurotechnic Method, and I
expect to develop each chapter further by teaching it. A mere list
of tabulated data will not answer as an efficient synopsis, because
it omits those ideative relations between data-groups which are
themselves discoveries and working insights. Therefore, a
cumulative literary exposition of the subject (such as this) is the
best route to the discovery of more data and a more psychotaxic
arrangement.
“I find I will be able to recall further details of my lost
dominancy, which gives no sign of resuscitation. I will read
Walt’s great poem ‘As I sat alone by blue Ontario’s shore . . . to
bring this chronologic chapter to a close.”
[page 414: blank]

[page 415]
CHAPTER 19
The Growing Ideal
The great secret to acquire true knowledge is to cultivate and

polish the reason and get a knowledge of things rather than words
by increasing perseverance.— CONFUCIUS
If a man when he has grasped success would remain true not

merely to the ideal with which he started but to the growing
ideal—one that should grow with the world-growth—he would
continue to succeed.
—ELMER GATES, diary, 1899
There was no difficulty for Elmer Gates in persevering at his

main work; his mind’s predilective interest could become
dominant on nothing else than his psychurgic art of using mind in
discovering and validating knowledge and in knowing reality. As
his art grew, so did its scope and ideals, encompassing larger and
more complete plans for the World Work. In addition, as his skill
and experience with cognosis grew, with its alluring new insights
into sophics, Consciousness, and Awareness, attention to
livelihood and business became all the more difficult. His lost
conative dominancy of 1912 was never regained. He tried many
times to make an adjustment between his main work and his
business affairs. In late 1913 he even
[page 416]
put away his manuscript of the Twelve Volumes, hoping to
transfer his enthusiasm to business. This was a new experience
because for over thirty-five years he had religiously devoted nearly
all the time he could to his main work every day. After a fair trial
he found that his mind some way or another kept on at his main
work; so the following spring he gave it attention for several hours,
then took up business as a secondary dominancy. This attitude of
interest in the work was the normal condition of dominant attention
and original fruitfulness. So long had he been lured by a deep love
of this kind of life and dreams of the more glorious future implied
by his discoveries that he had to train himself to create this
secondary dominancy. But by November of the next year, 1915,
he was still struggling to raise money to get one big invention
ready for commercial development. His business efforts were now
handicapped by not having laboratories to demonstrate his
inventions, and his best thinking convinced him he should start a
con amore laboratory with freedom to do as he pleased, giving a

closer relation between his achieved results, abilities, and

immediate opportunities.
One of the difficulties in getting the psychurgic work started
was its newness; only its superficial aspects were comprehended,
even by professional psychologists, and some subjects escaped
them entirely. One student who had spent a few months at the
Chevy Chase laboratories and read some of the current manuscript,
Dr. C. B. Bliss, professor of experimental and pedagogical
psychology at New York University, had written in 1900:
Your work is different from all that has gone before. If

anything should happen to you I doubt if anyone else could
realize for the world 10 percent of what is locked away in your
manuscript simply because no one has begun to think along
your lines. You ought to begin to educate at least a part of the
world’s thinkers in preparation for the work of making your
long efforts effectual as soon as you safely can, without danger
of destroying your opportunity by making thoughtful people
unsympathetic.
[page 417]
This novelty, together with the extraordinary scope of the
work, was partly responsible for failure to start the educational
phase of it at the Chevy Chase laboratories, although its other
purposes were accomplished. Another reason: he was judged by
the sensational accounts of writers who did not know the facts. A
serious handicap was that much of his real work was unknown; it
had not been expedient to publish his scientific work because an
indeterminate number of his discoveries and inventions related to
his war devices and methods, including his improved metal-
working processes, which from the first he kept secret. Others
related to acoustics and music, which he knew he would not be
ready to exploit until later and which he would not entrust to
undiluted commercialism.
These war inventions had formed the basis of his long-thought-
out War for Peace program. In a letter to Senator C. A. Towne in
1909, Gates had outlined some of its history. As early as 1883,
sixteen years before, he had made a number of inventions that he
did not succeed in keeping secret; for instance, a method of
guiding a torpedo by sound waves in air or water, of making an
escaped torpedo automatically sink itself after a certain time; a
method of propelling a device by compressed air which had been
previously superheated; the periscope; electrically guided torpedo
by an unwinding wire; and a gyrostatic regulator. Just before he
went to Chevy Chase, he showed his friend General William
Ludlow an aerial torpedo that could carry half its weight in

explosive and self-propel itself at several hundred feet per second

against a cliff two and a half miles away. At Chevy Chase he
devised a simpler method for guiding the torpedo. General
Ludlow undertook its promotion and asked President McKinley to
use some of the secret fund, then available for war purposes, for a
preliminary test. The President said he would “favorably consider
it” on his return to Washington, but as we all know he stopped at
Buffalo, and was assassinated. This discouraged Ludlow, who
dropped the matter; on his return from the Philippines he wanted to
resume negotiations but was ill of tuberculosis and soon died.
[page 418]
Then, Gates continued in his account, he invented another
guiding method not involving such expensive apparatus. His
friend John E. Searles, who saw the experiments, took the matter to
London and cabled that he expected to close a deal in a week, but
he dropped dead the next day in Waterloo Station. Gates’ papers,
which prudently had not contained the secret, were never returned
to him. He then invented a method of exploding simultaneously
every bit of explosive in a shell, and a number of other
improvements. These secrets were carefully guarded. During the
past ten years, as he recalled to Senator Towne, at least a dozen or
more inventive ideas were lost by talking too freely and by trusting
too much to the discretion and honesty of promoters, so he was
determined to keep the secrets more carefully. His experiments
were expensive and a worry because of the difficulty of keeping
secrets from workmen. The same man never made or saw more
than one part of any important device and, if possible, never knew
its purpose. Other parts were made in outside shops. Gates
assembled the parts himself. No one else saw the whole device
and no drawings or models were kept, the technical description
being in code. Another difficulty was keeping the secrets from the
prying investigations of attaches of foreign legations. When certain
nations, and manufacturers, learned he was working on war
inventions, he was watched by spies and detectives, and several
times his laboratory was broken into to steal his papers. This was
proven because decoy papers, drawings, and models purposely
labeled “War Inventions” were stolen. So far not an important
secret had been lost, his letter concluded, but secrecy was
imperative. Otherwise apparatus and persons involved might be in
danger.
His own country, he wrote in 1915, had not been available for
taking the initiative because it had been unalterably opposed to any
part in European politics, and to an adequate defense; and proper
conditions of secrecy were not possible in the departments of

Ordnance and War. He permitted, therefore, a sort of semi-secret

propaganda of his ideas through certain foreign
[page 419]
channels, hoping to arouse the interest of some real statesmen of
other nations. But one after another of these attempts were
frustrated by organized lobbying, by his insistence on the right to
offer the same devices to his own country in case of its need, and
by agreements demanding that wars of conquest not be waged.
Gates realized that his inventions would give such formidable
war power that any particular nation or alliance would have the
overwhelming superiority to enforce peace. He saw this as a world
opportunity, whose misuse would be deplorable and whose wise
use a blessing. “I most eagerly desire the peace of the world,” he
wrote; “that is the sole reason I have devoted so much time and
money to this line of research. But I am convinced that the Hague
Tribunal and Peace Treaties will not accomplish this end. There
will have to be a Peacemaker with a Big Club in one hand and the
Magna Charta of the Arts of Peace in the other.” Time has borne
out his conviction. But the War for Peace program of Elmer Gates
related to matters he recognized as more vital than the abolition of
war, though that was one of the first goals. More serious was the
problem of the relation of the many to the few, of the lower and
average to the higher and unique few (of any kind or class). This
problem, he saw, was disguised by the special forms it takes: in
some countries and for centuries, the caste system; more recently,
the poor versus the rich, labor versus capital, employees versus
employers, conservatism versus progress, intolerance versus
liberalism, socialism, and others. The main problem is often
hidden under religious and political questions and prejudices, but
the essential difficulty is the establishment of a harmonious and
just social order that will include the different Levels of
individuals, and their different Uplifts and Powers (and give to
each a free and fair opportunity for himself and the world’s needs).
This is the fundamental problem of government, and psychurgy is
the first to approach it psychologically and base its methods on the
degrees of mind-embodiment and
[page 420]
their taxifunctional use to the world. From this standpoint it is
easy to see that the greatest dangers (some “already bearing down
with deadly weight”) are not international but intranational, not
interracial but intraracial. Individuals in every country are
separating into factions, with a disaffection and mutual distrust as
bitter as and far more universal than has ever before divided the

common interests of humanity. “He who does not see this,” Gates
emphasized, “is ignorant, prejudiced, or willfully blind.”
To meet these old and new conditions something more is
required than warfare, and that something, he was convinced by its
record, was heurotechny, the art of creating the new. We will have
to discover what to do in any special case having no precedents
and knowledges. We will have to invent devices for doing what
we know ought to be done, and we may then creatively apply
them. The logic is inexorable that for this reason a scientific art of
discovering, inventing, and creating, applied by selected and
trained minds, is the only route to a solution and effective handling
of these problems.
“Psychurgy cannot make geniuses of each one of the world’s
citizens nor great geniuses of its pupils, but it can give greater
abilities and make a greater genius. The psychurgic work does not
want to make geniuses of all its pupils but aims to select the
world’s greatest geniuses and teach them to apply scientific
method to their minds and through them to the minds of every
lower level of the intellective pyramid. Persons of highest ability
are needed for the highest kind of work and of lower ability for
each lower kind, for all kinds are needed, and each is equally
important—the world machine would be crippled if any are
omitted. Psychurgy alone is capable of organizing all kinds and
degrees of mental evolution and giving each more ability, and of
psychotaxically organizing all these abilities of every level
according to their knowledges and skills and character and
predilections. To an ever greater extent as the years roll along
each person will thus be doing what he is best fitted
[page 421]
to do and which the world most needs; and that is as near utopia as
the government of the world need expect until we humans develop
into a higher species.”
It is easy to appreciate the growing strength of the incentive of
this branch of his World Work, of his increasing worry over its
frustration as the world situation worsened. For Elmer Gates,
psychurgy had in view the conservation and functional cooperation
of all races. Each race and nation, according to its geographical
opportunities and special abilities, should continue its own lines of
self-development, preferably a greater divergence and
differentiation than a common dead-level of uniformity. Thereby
more kinds of abilities will be available. To conserve what
evolution has achieved and avoid age-long relapses of civilization,
to utilize the races for the welfare of humanity, to control
impending dangers and opportunities—that is the problem. To
cooperate in the monumental task of bringing the whole body of

validated science and the whole of heurotechny, administered and

applied by a few thousand of the world’s best minds, to bear on all
problems following this Fundamental Psychurgic Law of Directed
Progress was the aim and goal of his World Work!
In spite of this stress, the sophic dominancies continued to
grow. In March 1913, Gates wrote his “Heuric Notes on a New
Power, Cognitism and Cognotism, and the Fundamental Moral,
Ethical, and Religious Laws.” This longhand manuscript of four
hundred pages, never typed, started: “For several days it has been
on my mind to write a few paideutic notes on my belief that I will
sometime make my most important achievement in the discovery
of a new step in urgation, a New Power relating to the control of
self-control (now the slave of esthesias), and mastery of the will,
perhaps from a higher plane of self-dictatorship than cognition,
taking advantage of a more fully regnant selfactivity. For several
days I have deeply felt such a Power is actually within my reach. I
am getting into a dominancy on the subject. More than ever I feel
certain my
[page 422]
biggest and most useful discovery—the culmination of my life of
heurotechnic work as applied to psychurgy is still ahead, the
natural fruitage of my long preparation. What I seek will be in the
urgic domain (of urgation, conation, action), and have of course a
concomitant esthesic Uplift and will be a step towards a new
cognic Level. I can hardly expect to attain this power during this
dominancy but only after several.
“I see, as a prospection, it involves the desire to give one’s life
for the world in the doing of a great deed that is right, but also as a
step towards the desire to be more of a Self and Person. It involves
a complete and altogether uncompromising truthfulness, justice,
and kindness, and so on. But these are only facets of the real and
larger jewel, the effulgence of which I see irradiating our moral
darkness and the warmth of which I sometimes feel. This power
quite likely presupposes the ability auturgically and dirigatively
and introspectively to shift personality dominancies from the
spectic to ceptic, from cognition to cognosis; it involves the moral
and ethical fitness to use that power, and a religious sanction. To
all but psychurgic pupils this will be very misleading. It is
primarily the conscious assumption of a power we already have
quiescent awaiting our usurpation, it is a self-activity into which
we can step. Already I see beyond this prospection; and someday
when my lifework is going on peacefully, when not financially
worried, when my conscience is clear in regard to turning over the
psychurgic work, while I am doing con amore thinking and

experimenting, and when my sore and weary heart is in a restful

satisfaction I will take the step—or fail trying.”
On rewriting he expanded his prospection to characterize the
desired discovery as new knowledge relating to the ability of a
person to make himself do willingly and at once just as well as he
knows how. The emotions, even in the most self-controlled
person, still defy inhibition and sway the judgment. He should train
for only one fundamental habit, the all-incentive principle of doing
immediately that which he knows is based
[page 423]
on truth. The immediate doing of every act that will lead to a
greater enjoyment-capacity is far greater incentive than the desire
for any one enjoyment. It is the one incentive. Now, the willing of
this one incentive has for its ultimate modus operandi the willing
of that which is true knowledge; and thus we fall back upon
validated science and heurotechny as our one and only guide. The
true inward ruler of each person is the power to do, immediately
and completely, as well as he knows how to do and can do. Herein
lies the method and program of a true and great World Work—a
truly moral and religious mission. Surely we see the moral and
religious meanings and uses of validated science, heurotechny,
philosophy, art, industry; we know how and to what extent to carry
each science to each race and nation.
Another insight growing in vividness and range belonged to the
Unwelcome Lesson. Man has voluntarily had nothing to do with
the goings-on that we call the world, except to a slight degree in
later stages of evolution. He found himself here, when he began to
think about himself, not only as a product of the “blind procreant
urge” of the world, whose unconscious aim is continuance of life
on earth no matter how—whether by progression or retrogression
and at any hazard just to keep the species alive—but also as a
product of the Will to Live (das Wille des Lebens) which, like a
monster immanent in the world, dreams on from age to age in its
nightmare of life-forms, incarnating themselves in endless fantastic
varieties. The only apparent aim of this subconscious life is
merely to continue to live, developing an intellect as an aid,
striving to live whether it be pleasant or painful—just to live! Is it
then so priceless a boon to the world-process that each creature be
an embodiment of the desire to live and perpetuate its kind at the
price of its own life? At any time or place, in air or water or on
land, any trivial advantage or any saltatory mutation of body or
mind in any creature is perpetuated by natural selection (or other
evolutionary methods) and developed into an accentuated
structural

[page 424]
and functional feature so that the life of that species may continue
in that local and temporal environment—a condition destined to
pass away and leave a burden of useless structure! This is a
process that accentuates one peculiarity at the expense of its other
features, making the creature a one-sided monstrosity adapted not
to the whole world but to one evanescent and local condition. The
adaptation is a freak structure, and when thrust into new
conditions, local and temporal, a freak addition is made; and by
thus adding freak to freak, organic evolution has led to
morphological monstrosities. Every organ has such a variety of
homologies than when they are contemplated as a group, they
seem like vagaries of a frenzied cubist’s dream or daydreams of an
opium fiend.
There are creatures with only one or two senses, others with
one or two of another kind, some with half a dozen; and if one has
not all the senses required to respond to all kinds of stimuli, it is
one-sided and incomplete. Even man lacks senses for certain
stimuli. There are creatures that have not gotten beyond imagery
and conceptuating, some not beyond ideation or beyond thought of
the first order (and that includes 99 percent of the human family).
Man has not gotten as far onward intellectually as the needs of his
life and the nature of his environment demand; he is yet
incomplete and one-sided. The same is true esthesically and
urgatively.
The more fully a creature becomes adapted to a given
environment, the less it is adapted to any other; and when the
environment changes, the evolutionary result becomes not merely
useless but harmful. If a species becomes adapted to an
environment that in time will pass away, when it does pass of what
use is the evolutionary development? Of what good is the result of
ages of development if the inevitable result is extinction? A brain
that has had freak additions made to freak structures—or a stomach
that has had locally adapted variations added to locally adapted
variations—until its freak development is adapted to multitudinous
conditions that no longer exist, is not a
[page 425]
normal result and should not be perpetuated. Of what use would
be the immortality of that organ as part of the mental experience?
Obviously it would be a foolish conception of immortality that
would postulate carrying into the other world organs that were of
use solely as adaptations to this one. It is not the local and
temporal that will be transmitted to the Beyond, if such continuity
of personal identity takes place; it will be the universal and
eternal—the cognostic and the generalized cognitive.

Now, this development of freak organs is true of the human

race. The human mind is only a small part of the experience that
should normally result from the interaction between Consciousness
and its environment. Certain tendencies have been exaggerated,
others undeveloped. Interest, one-sidedly, has led when necessity
did not drive. Every organ of the body and brain is the result of
this one-sided development. Only insofar as cognition has had
experience with Consciousness has the adaptation been with
reference to the universal and permanent. Organic life, including
humanity, has grown without the guidance of Cognosis and
validated knowledge, but has blindly followed the will to live.
For happiness to thrive on earth, we who see must organize the
few best minds and bring validated science to remaking the human
race, avoiding one-sidedness, following as our standard and
immanent and transcendent guide the eternal nature of
Consciousness. We must introduce in organized form the
influence of conscious rationality, of reason in operation, not
merely to live, even at the price of retrogression, but to live for the
better and best, to transform and rule the environment so that living
may be a constant achieving of Good, Better, Best. Non-
adaptation, retrogression, freak developments, ignorance,
organized theory and belief that are not true—these are the Great
Dangers. This was the growing aim of the World Work, the
increasingly powerful urge and aspiration of Elmer Gates.
[page 426]
The problem of a conscious rational being neglecting to do
what he knows he should do became more clear and formidable to
Gates. To a large extent he saw it was because the ought-feeling
and impulse have been habitually and universally vitiated and so
weakened by a preponderance of untrue yet accepted teachings that
confidence was destroyed and the must-feeling blunted. To attain
this confidence as an indubitable faith is a primary and
fundamental step, and nothing less than laboratory work in
validated science will accomplish this knowledge-faith. Validated
science must be collated and taught, else no one will feel the real
and potent authority of truth. Providing adequate means for the
World Work, and doing it, is the highest mission. Next highest is
the same kind and degree of trust in scientific research, and next is
trust in the psychurgic philosophy according to its degrees of
certainty.
Gates later expressed this question of belief versus faith in this
way: there is a faith in the fixity of what is and will be, more
fundamental than any or all belief. It is the fundamental religious
feeling. We trust that somehow good will be the final goal of ill.
Knowledge is the eyes of faith, for faith is blind. Knowledge gives

a faith in the Immanent, The All, the Eternal, the Cosmic Process,
in Consciousness as the God-like regnancy of Existence, in
Necessity as the condition of Freedom; and to the extent that these
are not mere beliefs they stand for a faith in goings-on of which
our experience is a fundamental part. There is a faith relating to
basic matters, immanent and intrinsic in knowledge and
experience, and there is also a faith in the overhead or transcendent
or beyond, a trust or confidence that needs no belief, is weakened
by it. Data derived by a mind through scientific method have a
deeper power over the individual than “belief-data,” and are the
hope of solving the belief problem. As a person progresses in
knowledge and development, he learns that an alleged truth that is
the most useful is so because it has a higher degree of truthfulness.
By Gates’ own application of heurotechny, scientific data were
seen to have moral and
[page 427]
religious significance, and a faith that the Unknown will yield to
heurotechnic methods. Therein lies man’s greatest hope: that what
he does not know the mind will soon discover. He believes in the
Unknown as he would in a storehouse of treasures.
Returning to the sophic dominancy, in late March (1913) Gates
concluded that it was possible by one gigantic step to attain the
mastery of self-control, of character, of purposing, of desire, of
self-activity, by a cognitive communion with cognosis and by
something else. He had a prognosis, but its attainment would be
very difficult because it would be a wholly new step in human
faculty and the biggest now awaiting human achievement, another
and new level of personurgy. He had made a long and successful
step toward it in attaining this third but incomplete dominancy.
Although the dominancies had been growing longer and more
intense and definite, he still had not reached the peak. It was
another step to recognize that the power to which he aspired would
not merely be a step in the prolongation of life but in some close
and vital way would be connected with the attainment of a Life
Beyond (if such there was), and that a knowledge of the universal
and eternal (cognosis) was at least one modus operandi for its
possible attainment.
By early April he believed that the sought-for power was in the
Awareness, but he realized that he would not be able to recover his
meaning from his diary notes. A practical step would consist in
intentionally and integratively associating each act with the
recognition of its rightness by the Awareness, until it became a
habit to do that which is seen by the Awareness to be approved by
the intellect without reference to esthesic incentives. This was, he
wrote, undoubtedly the greatest moral, ethical, and religious

(m.e.r., or “meric”) law of conduct. There would be only one habit

to form, that of meeting the Approvals. The urgation rises out of
the witnessing and not out of the Approval. The judgments
witnessed by the Awareness will be right or wrong according as
the person’s scientific knowledge is extensive and valid;
[page 428]
therefore the meric nature will compel him to acquire valid
scientific knowledge and heurotechny will become the main labor
and work and ideal of the coming cycle.
The month’s work proved how true a mentative dominancy
Gates was entering, so strong that it could not be stopped by his
trying financial period. He arrived at the new insight of the need
for alethics applied to the Approvals. When a person does not do
as well as he knows and can, it may be because a more important
physiologic or psychologic work is then being accomplished. If he
knew, he would approve of the delay. It is a matter of knowledge
and research. The most direct way to find the answer is to tabulate
the results of the judgment (whether to act or not), and in the light
of the consequences of his carried-out judgments, to discover what
is best. Gates was amazed to realize that this study belonged to his
earliest scientific work—the experimental study of judgments and
judgment-training. The work of his fourteenth year now found its
greatest application in the discoveries of his fifty-fourth year!
“Again!” he wrote in astonishment, “I must make a tabulation of
Let-Us-Do-This and Let-Us-Not-Do-This, only this time I will call
them witnessed Approvals and they will be more important.” A
wonderful expedient for avoiding the consequences of lack of
scientific knowledge! It was an experimental pragmatism; and the
second great meric law. The experimental study of judgment-
consequences was a judgment-training.
This dominancy also brought new insight illuminating the
whole subject of Determinism and Indeterminism considered by
the Disparate-Steps method. Gates also saw that in physics there
was a great looseness of terminology and lack of philosophical
insight. Energy, force, mass, and similar terms were inadequately
conceived, with overlapping meanings. They should be redefined
from the sophic standpoint, with their disparateness considered.
Accumulating concepts and ideas and insights, and naming each
separately, would form the mentative synopsis to advance
knowledge most efficiently along that line; and this was the
fundamental heurotechnic method.
[page 429]
In late June he felt he must write out cognitism, or the
fundamental philosophy of cognition, of which humanism is only a

particular instance applicable to one of many degrees of

evolutionary mind-embodiment, the others being such as
simianism and supermanism. The Weltanschauung of a creature
with only three senses will be different from that of one with eight,
and that of a human will differ from that of the superman into
which man hopes to evolve. According to its place in the scale of
evolution, its environment, the accumulated knowledge of the race,
and the social organization, each creature will be a measure of life
and will have its own corresponding philosophy; but the general
laws operative in all creatures will constitute cognitism.
Likewise Gates felt he must write out psychurgy as the general
art of cognitive mind-using, of which anthropology was but one
application, with general laws for all creatures; and in addition, an
outline of a comparative pragmatism not only as applicable to man
but as elucidated by a study of other creatures—a comparative
epistemology. Each degree of mind-embodiment, according to its
environment, has its own unique appetites and desires that are
good for it, and has its own way of using any good, its own
pragmatic test of utility. Each has its own temporary telos, its own
morals and ethics; but however different, general laws underlie all,
constituting a general ethics.
How he would like to devote another dominancy to
reconsideration of these steps of Disparateness and their relations!
Gates yearned in July—to further learn about these sophic things
by tabulating each discriminable difference of concept, insight, and
idea and naming it, and using this list as a mentative synopsis for
the next step.
He again emphasized the importance of a re-study of the
insightive (intuitive) mode of knowing (which he termed
sophiognosy); it was the other pole of cognition opposite
perceptual inference, by which fundamental insights were
acquired. If, as he had so far found, each human mind that “feels
at home in the altitude of this Level” attained the same insights and
could not omit them, then that mode of knowing amounted to an
[page 430]
Oracle, the only one at man’s disposal. Apart from philosophical
importance, as a matter of psychologic and anthropologic research
and as ordinary subjective analysis, these insights needed to be
discriminated and named and classifically tabulated.
In 1913, his dominancies in sophics included further
excursions into religion (religics was his term) and dealt especially
with such subjects as self-realization and the Higher Self. Should
an individual rely on himself? (Psychurgy implies self-reliance.)
And what are the fundamental conduct-problems? The answers to
these questions will determine whether or not use may be made of

the world’s opportunities for creating a more glorious humanity.

The self must make use of all that is other than self; self-reliance
has no purpose other than self-expression. Gates’ Directive
Principle, as opposed to the principle of laissez-faire, aimed to run
things, not for the good of the Cosmic Process or the mosquito or
housefly, but for the good of man. Psychurgy had the very
important insight that the mind of man was part of nature and one
of its processes, and therefore could contribute to the course of
nature without bringing in anything that belongs outside nature.
The legitimate sphere of directive action was everything upon
which the mind had the power to produce a desirable effect. Social
institutions are tools and means for self-expression of the
individual. In cognosis is found true self-activity, the basic self-
reliance.
In his discussion of self-reliance and the utilization of ultra-
individual and ultra-human powers, auturgy (the art of controlling
the will by knowledge) is described as the technique of self-
reliance, the directive control of self-expression for self-
realization. Self-expression is the self-development of the person
(body and mind) and periperson (his apt term for one’s interacting
and organized environment); it involves a special training of the
abilities and genius-capacities and organized effort for taking
advantage of opportunities. It is the only attainable kind of
happiness, the only way the individual may attain his full growth.
Self-expression, without objective and
[page 431]
subjective repression, is the only way to attain self-realization, the
only natural way to make a livelihood. To do what is natural to it
is, for any species, its normal mode of self-expression, but what is
natural to man has different kinds or stages of normality—the
auturgic, sociurgic, epistemurgic, or cognostic. Consequently a
normal auturgy must arise out of a scientific study of the most
important part of his life, which is called mind, and also out of
Consciousness, and environment. It must be based on the six
groups of sciences. His whole nature must be given full freedom
to express itself in any way it chooses.
Man without abandoning his self-reliance may make use of
ultrahuman factors and agencies. May he ever advantageously
abandon his self-reliance and give himself over voluntarily to the
Let Alone principle (chance or fate, spirits, God)? Gates suggested
tests for the efficacy of prayer and said: “I am not an antagonist of
prayer. I cannot say I am an unbeliever in it. I simply want to
know the truth. I imbibed the prayer instinct with my mother’s
milk, had it inculcated by my father’s daily and sincere example,
and had it presented in a more convincing aspect by my earliest

teacher (Virginia) as the Light Within. I made experimental tests

of prayer which taught me that most of what is usually believed is
false. I still feel its spell at times; sometimes accompanied by the
feeling and belief that I will soon actually get what I pray for, and
afterwards I do get it. It may be that a premonition of coming
success leads me to want it so eagerly that I involuntarily feel like
asking for it, and if so the ‘answer’ to prayer would be only the
natural fulfillment of a foresight. The cumulative heurotechny, by
a literary exposition thereof, kept up to date, is the effective kind of
prayer, but it is a different conception and method than usual. I
have been unable to find any scientifically admissible evidence
that the old kind of prayer to God has ever really been ‘answered.’
I do not believe that in any of the many wars the victory was ever
the result of an answer to a prayer, for always both sides have
prayed for it. I do not believe any disease was ever cured because
of the effect
[page 432]
a prayer had on God, but I am ready to believe that the subjective
effect may cure many a disease caused by worry, overwork,
emotion, and nervous strain. Prayer will not pull your cart up the
hill, chop your wood, bake your bread, or memorize the
multiplication table. Is it not strange that because these prayers are
never really answered, the multitudes keep on praying? Is it
because once in awhile there is a suggestive coincidence or a false
report? I am not denying that prayer may have important
subjective effects tending to bring about what is wanted.”
Long experience made him sure that a classified and
cumulative literary exposition of one’s mental life will lead the two
factors (organism and environment) and the third factor (immanent
Consciousness) to the ascertainment of knowledge and its
inventive and creative application, constituting true guidance.
Such heurotechnical steps, systematizing and improving the naive
and haphazard processes of “original” achievement, are veritable
answers to our organized desire-prayers. The cognitive mind seeks
light, desires it, and thereby those processes (cognitive and
ultracognitive) are set to work that get the light. Discovery is
always a step into the unknown. It is the result of an
individualistic conscious-process aided by a non-individualistic
Consciousness process, and that is truly to all intents and purposes
an answer to prayer. “Do you see that it is?” Gates queried.
He saw in the almost universal instinct for prayer a dim
foregleam of a truth, that the recording and classifying and uttering
of one’s main desires and aims tended to intensify them and render
them dominant. This would cause the mind to notice and gather
relevant data, and the person to organize his periperson with

reference to these purposes—both stimulating original ideation and

instruction of all kinds in that direction. An aim, like an idea, is
never clearly before the mind until it has been several times stated
as completely and perspicuously as possible.
Gates saw heurotechny as a scientifically formulated method
for consulting the Oracle. In calling it a prayer, he insisted he
[page 433]
meant actually—that the human mind seeking the yet unknown
actually yearns for the new step; it puts the problem before
Consciousness and awaits an answer—and gets it. The
heurotechnic method was a systematization of all that was
successful in the naive and haphazard methods plus the aid of more
recent discoveries in scientific method. It organized the inward
prayer for knowledge into an efficient Desire-Prayer that through
Consciousness directed the brain-processes to utilize the mind-
content in such a way as to make more discoveries than would
otherwise occur. It brought all of a person’s knowledge and skill
and the whole of the demonstrated data of science to the aid of his
self-reliance in accomplishing the destiny implied by his particular
abilities.
Self-reliance was a “doing” of the Cosmic Process as well as a
doing of man. Following the conclusions of Le Dantec and others,
man’s mind may be conceived as a functional result of his
organism and his total environment. Man can modify both in
limited ways; thus the practicality of progress.
And finally, cognosis was that portion of the Immanent Cosmic
Consciousness that became known to an individual. It was the
Cognostic Self and had a higher kind of self-activity than the
cognitive self. It was the basis of a higher kind of self-reliance.
The self-expression of the cognistic self was auturgy, that of
the Cognostic Self was cognosturgy. In it the universal and eternal
find embodied expression. In the sphere where auturgy and
cognosturgy overlap dwells the Awareness, and the use of it is a
higher self-regnancy. In the Awareness, Gates found a new kind
of volitional fiat, a more potent activity-decree, a more regnant
self-reliance. “There are times of greatest poise and peace,
especially in the morning hours, when I often stand on the
Awareness Bridge between the subjective and the Inmost,” he
wrote, “when I seem to get more closely in rapport with the
Cosmic Consciousness and feel the presence, as another being, of
the self-active regnancy of Inmost Cosmos. I get more closely in
touch with its nature and feel the thrill of its endeavor. I will be

[page 434]
misunderstood if any of the usual ‘occult’ or ‘mystical’ meanings
are attached. I remain actively awake and aware and in full
possession of my faculties, and am simply carrying introspection
further than ever before, and at the place where it comes to what
has hitherto been a chasm between the subjective and Inmost I find
a Bridge and beyond that the new human faculty cognosis. While
on that Bridge of Awareness I get dim insights of the possibility, or
rather of the immediate practicability, of my being able to make
use of the Awareness as a new kind of authority or potency or
regnancy over the cognitive will or self. It would be fully possible
and practical to take this step if I would only do it; if I were willing
I could now rise to a higher Level where I will do just what I know
I ought to do without flinching—the wonder is that I am never
quite willing. There are things I would have to give up or begin
that would not be easy although, I know, better in the long run.
For example, to be entirely truthful, how that would upset things! I
would at one quick step become and remain a ‘Great Person,’ ruled
by the self-reliance of that Higher Self. Not incentives, but
validated knowledge must cause the deed. Awareness, like a
mirror, witnesses with imperturbable accuracy every item of
cognitive consciousness and cognosis, which includes every
motive and incentive and conviction, and if a man does as well as
he knows and can, he is moral, ethical, and religious, but if he does
not do so, he rejects his only guidance and that is the only possible
sin.
“It will be done sometime,” he continued. “Science and right
action have not yet spoken so as to be heard by the world; they
have not yet had a chance to bear their natural fruits, but the time
will come when the animal in us will be subdued; when
phylogenetic obsessions will be exercised; when validated
knowledge and evaluated incentives and tested arts will govern the
world. Man will someday cease to tell lies or deceive or steal; he
will be completely kind and gentle; do as well as he knows and
can; and be free from disease and crime and poverty. Love will be
glorified, and man will live long and happily.”
[page 435]
Psychurgy gave a new point of view to religion, and cognosis
added a new dimension. Gates recognized three cognitive
branches of religious development, also four cognostic, two
philosophic, and two postpaideutic branches. The psychurgic
conception of religion was fundamentally a method of scientific
research into the religious instinct, studying and expressing it
through these branches. Religion would then be known, felt, and
acted as one’s conscious relatedness to The Whole (or The All).

In March 1915, Gates recorded further results of a sophic

dominancy, with notes on a new and practical branch of
philosophy and its method the application of strict scientific
method to the process of discovering the philosophical mental
content natural to the human mind, the further content to be
elicited by a systematic mentative development and by
psychurgically training the philosophical function.
During that year he also wrote Volume 11 of his Nine
Volumes, a condensation of the original Twelve Volumes. This
Volume 11, entitled “The Economic Problem,” discussed how to
install educational and research facilities for solving the world
problems. The facilities were to be financed by commercializing
some of his best inventions. It outlined his main work and aims
from the business standpoint; it pointed out that this work was the
work of Mind, not the mind of Elmer Gates; and that Mind is the
earth’s greatest natural resource. The concrete goal was to
establish a Demonstrative Exhibit of scientific method applied to
science-teaching and the art of research. The Psychurgic Institute
must be one thing in the world that would be wholly free and
wholly science-guided (another reason why the work was
unattractive to endowment). He pointed out that since finishing his
researches in 1908, three quarters of nearly every day had been
devoted to writing the more difficult and central portions of each
of the Twelve Volumes; but he needed to fill gaps and incorporate
piles of notes and then give the writing a more paideutic form and
literary continuity. Freedom from worries and better control of his
stampeding emotions were necessary;
[page 436]
unless greater serenity was attained, he realized, his life could be
shortened.
Sometime in this period, about 1915, he wrote the final edition
of his “Confidential Plans,” also stressing the business aspects and
listing, with brief descriptions, over 130 inventions in a number of
groups, such as the Secret War, Acoustics and Music, the Fourteen
Thermodynamic Processes, Mining, Medical, House and Home,
Photography, Aerial, and Education. He also wrote his manuscript
on Stenoscript, improving his shorthand systems previously
worked out as Graphotechny in 1913 and earlier attempts. He
outlined his chapter on Esthesotechnics, or the Esthesic Stage of
Science.
In June 1917, he wrote his private paper of four hundred pages
on “The Psychurgic Method of Government: War, Education and
Research, Government.” “Humanity,” he wrote, “is now in the
stress and strain of its first world war. It must as quickly as it can
extricate itself from this predicament else its most advanced races,

which have given us science and liberty, and whose greatness has
not yet culminated, will be deprived of supremacy and the Ship of
progress turned backward upon the Tide of time.” This danger
disturbed him greatly, and his revised books became booklets on
“World Problems: Their Solution By Scientific Method.” One
cannot read this account of dangers and opportunities and not feel
alarmed and saddened to review recent history, and to realize that
most world problems remain unsolved, most opportunities
neglected or unseen. Yet during this period, with two sons in the
Army, his eldest in France as lieutenant of artillery, Gates not only
continued his main work as usual but was able to branch out in
side issues, such as his psychurgic view on poetry.
Artistic people everywhere will be glad he found means and
time to write his delightfully useful and original treatise on poetry,
completed in July 1917. Dedicated to “The Light that was Never
on Land and Sea but only in the Mind of Man,” it expounded “The
Art Poetic” from the psychologic and
[page 437]
psychurgic point of view. It was in three parts: “The Mental
Technique for Poetic Insights and Feelings,” “The Literary
Technique for Poetry Writing,” and “Poetry of the Future.” As
stated in its Preface, the poetic ability must be developed and
trained and functioned until it experiences the “Glimpses and
Thrills” worth writing about. The main part of this mental training
belongs to psychurgy, but this treatise disclosed the psychurgic
method from the layman’s point of view, showing how to handle
the poetic mood more practically and how to direct its creative
impulses. Hitherto left to chance, this finest ability has been
entirely neglected. His book treated of that new and larger
psychurgic conception that involved not merely the art of writing
and appreciating poetry but more essentially the art of concretely
living it—of using its more superb glimpses and more intense
thrills obtained during exaltations that lifted the mind to a higher
plane. These were models and ideals to be striven for until
attained in every phase of life. It required, therefore, a complete
synthesis of the poetic achievements of all poets-a synthesis from
the literary standpoint, and an actualized poetry from the personal,
psychologic, and psychurgic standpoints, resulting in a habit of
living the poetry of the human race as its normal and exalted
happiness.
“Do highest moments of greatest minds during most sensitive
and exalted moods have no use except as pleasant reading?” Gates
queried. “Are these clearest visions and supremest joys to end as
nothing but literature? Is poetry to be kept in books, or embodied
in brain and tinctured into the feelings and incarnated in the daily

life of millions? These moments of exalted insight and emotion

are to be perpetuated and lived, to become the GUIDE-BOARDS
to the Highway of Progress, and as the practice of Synthetic Poetry
it is to become the religion of science.”
This was a treatise from the standpoint of scientific method,
notmerely as a literary form but as a life-form, a life-norm; not
merely as a pleasant group of glimpses and thrills but as a maker
and creator of evolutionary results at the top level of life in each
[page 438]
individual. Much of the meaning, Gates cautioned, would be
gained only from a practice of his book by one who mastered and
lived it—a unique doctrine for a book on poetry. These trainings
would augment life’s highest and best hours, would augment the
vision of every knowledge-whole and the joy of every feeling-
complex—and what more could be asked from a gospel of science!
If life means more at some times than at others, then the living of
synthetic poetry will augment these best times and use them as
pathways to higher attainments.
A poet is an interpreter, making the speechless feelings
understand the language of the intellect; he is an answerer. Poetry,
as the voice of our highest insights and richest feelings, should be
kept sacred, for it touches and reveals and interprets the highest
attainments of intellection and feeling, and is (for such was the
gospel of this book) our best guide to re-experiencing them. A true
poem is a glimpse of something new to the individual, fulfilling
part of the deep desire to know, and is also a happiness of feeling
from that new outlook and inlook; the two are a product of an
exaltation, and produce one. They are acmes of human experience,
and are more than any one or all of the usual insights and emotions
because they are mental states of an exaltation—00 of a person
who for the time being is veritably exalted. These Glimpse-Thrills
are a particular kind of psychal unit—a revelation, a bit of higher
life constituting a Great Outlook-Inlook; and the linguistic
expression of such culminating moments, in constructive and
artistic literary form, is a poem. True poetry touches life at its
climaxes of combined understanding and feeling, climaxes radiant
with the added glow of exaltation. The new poetry is vibrant with
life. It has acquired dignity by being useful; it becomes a
ministering angel offering happiness. It is the evolving hymn of
the larger nature-ecstasy; it is the ritual of a worship without a
creed.
His prolonged psychologic studies led Gates to results
foreshadowing a civilization replete with realizations of beauty and
joy based on a new and grander esthetic; and progress in other

[page 439]
domains of science made him believe that the grandest poetry was
yet to come. These studies also caused him to recognize that the
pragmatic criterion—usefulness in fulfilling a purpose—was
applicable to feeling. For instance, his appreciation of poetry and
art had changed both with his age and need. Use was therefore the
test of art.
He wrote that he had been “uttering poems” all his life, but
because he could never take time to get them sufficiently perfect,
preferred to record them in prose. He considered a poem the first
step of the mind toward some scientific discovery or philosophical
insight that was just about to dawn. In poetry and all forms of the
fine arts generally we must woo and win the Cosmic Process in us
if we desire those mental conditions that inaugurate and maintain
the activities of esthetic feeling and fruitage. If the subconscious
processes are cosmically directed, we may hope to attain that
exaltation of the creative imagination that illumines and
transfigures. Something larger than the individuality of the artist
guides the chisel, directs the brush, and inspires the pen.
Synthetic poetry and dramaturgy and music arose as a new
conception, a possibility based on the existence of a psychotaxis of
esthesias, as outlined in his fruitful sophic dominancy of 1909-11.
Poetry has had something to say about each esthesia, and drama
has had a way to express it. Each poet and dramatist, however, has
expressed only some little phase of an esthesia, some expressions
being better than others. Although each esthesia has been more
nearly expressed by all attempts considered together than by any
particular one, no esthesia has ever been fully expressed. Gates
did not mean defined: an intellective definition of an esthesia is not
a matter of poetry or drama but of systematic science. It was plain
that a synthesis could be made of all actual results that the world
had achieved in expressing any esthesia, and then carried to its full
and complete expression. These principles were also applicable to
music. A new rhetoric also began to dawn, in which the rationale
of metaphor and literary form would be psychologically
determined by a study of
[page 440]
those actually used under various emotional conditions by different
ages, sexes, races—a scientific rhetoric.
Gates considered this book on poetry an unfinished sketch, an
outline he would not have time to complete, much to his regret, as
its “labor would give much joy” to him. He hoped that some
psychurgic pupil “warmed with the Promethean Fire” would carry
out the principles and methods and more perfectly expound and
apply them. The synthetic poetry would be a monumental work,

requiring many assistants. Contrasting with the growing World

Work ideals and his increasing worries was the comfort of Gates’
ever-appreciated family life. The following letter, written on a
business trip, is representative.
Akron, O., Aug. 19, 1915

DEAR MAMA, CHILDREN, AND PEARLIE—
The B & 0 followed the Potomac to Harper’s Ferry and

Cumberland (where it was hot), and then the Eastern Branch to
Magnolia, Paw Paw and Greenspring, where the river loses
itself in puddles. It is beautiful—verdure-clad high hills, fine
boating, camping parties, and a good place to botanize. I think
we might make a trip to this section for a day or two. I
approached Pittsburgh at just the right time of day and year—
never saw it look so Pittsburgh. The soot looked like a
gathering storm, like a hurricane, and the flashing of the blast
furnaces like lightning! This is not a mere word picture; that’s
the way it looked and the forest of tall chimneys at Homestead
(Carnegie’s factories) made the scene very realistic. I was
surprised to find Youngstown look like a smaller Pittsburgh.
Akron, when I last saw it over 40 years ago, was a little village
with a canal in its midst. Now the canal is all walled over and
is the main street of the town of over one hundred thousand
inhabitants, every one of whom, if you get to talking to him,
will proudly tell you that “right here, under this Main St. is the
old canal
[page 441]
where Garfield as a boy had to toe the line and guide the mule
on the tow path.” I feel at home with the people, but the
population is mostly Italians, Hungarians, and Poles. The
newspapers publish everyday an account of the war in all these
languages. Two Associated Press papers here so we get the
news as soon as you Washingtonians do. But you denizens of
the District do not get such fine fruits and vegetables, nor so
cheaply.
By trolley to Cleveland, 1 1/2 hours, which gets there
quicker than the train. I passed through Ohio-like scenery.
The boneset and Canadian thistle and clumps of trees by
brooklets seemed to say as I passed, “Here is one of us come
back again—an Ohio boy.” Perhaps it was only in me that the
greeting took place after all. I hope the Ohio people will some
day be as proud of me as the City of Cleveland, e.g., is of its
Euclid Avenue or “its finest Arcades in the world.” The nicest

fellow in Cleveland is Mr. Pattison (brother of the Governor).

I may go to Dayton sometime when I am here. It’s five hours
from Akron. I will find there no vestige of childhood’s
familiar haunts, where nature first took me into her confidence
and where I first gave her my trust. It’s all city now, I am told.
Here come the callers.

Lovingly,
E. G. & OG!
[page 442: blank]

[page 443]
Chapter 20
Time: All There Is
I could do anything if I knew how and had time enough. Now I

can find out how by mind-embodiment and study and the art of
mentation; and as for time—I have all there is!
—ELMER GATES, youthful diary
But there had never been enough time for him. Even back in
1914 he wrote that for ten years he had known he could hope only
barely to outline the main facts and methods of the main topics of
psychurgy, despite its superior and time-saving methods. But
mentative skill should lengthen life by actually adding years: that
normal mental activity that was equalized in all structures was
conducive to health, his early researches gave direct proof. The
mentator lived more each day; if his mental process took place ten
times more rapidly than otherwise, he could live ten times as
much. If a one hundred years could be lived, would that not equal
a thousand years? he speculated optimistically. How he wished he
could!
Would stronger incentives help? Every earnest worker has felt
their need. For himself, he felt he did not try hard enough for the
still greater successes so plainly possible. In every endeavor he
could have done better or more, except in the application of his life
(“of all I am and have”) to the heurotechnic
[page 444]
study of Consciousness and the application of his discoveries to the
art of using the mind (psychurgy). In this he hardly could have
done more or worked harder or longer, yet he might have taken
better care of his health, had less time wasted by the curious, paid
more attention to livelihood, and saved much worry and time.
Obviously he had much stronger incentives than usual, so
strong that he habitually mentated on the average of twelve hours a
day on his one great subject of psychurgy, which so fascinated him
that nothing else ever much interested him. Never did he have to
drive, but rather to repress himself; yet he felt that if incentives had
been stronger, more would have been accomplished with the same
labor, with more penetrating attention and searching introspection,
clearer understanding, and greater skill. He observed that periods
of greatest and most successful endeavor were invariably those of
most intense feeling—not only interest in subject or joy in work
but an intense desire to accomplish it and realize its goals. To the

task of strengthening incentives he applied his art of training and

augmenting the esthesias, a practice which he had started very
early in his career.
He could have been writing out of his own experience when in
his 1910 Glossary definition he wrote of genius that it had
extraordinary powers of doing work and of persistence at it,
generally keeping closely to its task until death, neglecting all else
for the sake of completing its work in time. Elsewhere he wrote:
“it is altogether probable that my life will end by my being a
victim to my complete absorption in this work, to the neglect of
everyday details.”
As for completing the Twelve Volumes, he believed he could
make a more compact psychotaxis of them, owing to
improvements in methods; and with the enlarged insights into
cognosis he thought he could write an epitome in five volumes.
All cognitive subjects would be in one volume, all cognostic
subjects in another, and all sophic and Superpaideutic subjects in a
third. Volume 1, the Propaedeutic, was written, and a revision of
[page 445]
Volume 11 had been started. He estimated in 1915 that he might
do this writing in three more years if there was nothing else to do;
then later the volumes could be expanded as originally intended if
time was available.
But in 1922 they were still described as the Nine Volumes:
“WorldProblems: Their Solution by Scientific Method”:
The Four Volumes
I. General Introduction to Psychurgy; Steps in the

History of the Discovery and Development of Psychurgy and
the New Psychology; Purpose of the Nine Volumes; Nature
and Kinds of World Problems. How Can Psychurgy Be Made
Available to the Public? To You Personally?
II. The Economic and Industrial Problem. Installing
Facilities for Solving World Problems by Research and
Education.
III. The Personal Problem. Identical Vocabularies in
Physics and Psychology. Psychurgic Propaedeutics.
Beginnings of the Psychurgic Life.
IV. The Educational Problem: The New Psychology of
the Intellections and Science-Teaching and the New Education.

The FiveVolumes
V. The Problem of the Inlook.

VI. Synthetic Science.
VII. Scientific Method, Validation, and Philosophy.
VIII. Morality, Ethics, and Religion.
IX. The World Work.
The gospel of the Nine Volumes was that the guidance of an

ever-improving scientific method was the only way of solving
world problems; that there was no way except by applying
[page 446]
all the validated sciences and arts and the whole of the New
Method of Research to education and industrial organization until
the method involved all human institutions and world
governments. Not until then could the world be set right and kept
right. It discarded altogether the Unproved (all mere beliefs and
speculations and political methods) and looked to normal and
validated mentation as being the safest and wisest and only true
leader of mankind—an impersonal leadership based on the
summed-up and accumulated and validated experiences of
humanity. Under the guidance of psychurgy scientific method
would ultimately guide the world!
Gates emphasized that he had announced them not as books on
psychurgy but as books for solving world problems. They were
books whose main purpose was not to convey information but to
lead you and the world to do something!
“Over a third of a century ago I was able to prove that
scientific method is mental method,” he wrote, and “I was resolved
to discover those kinds of mental states and processes that
constitute scientific method and then take those steps necessary to
put it into practice throughout the world, for all else is of
secondary importance. Fearing that by disability or death, or by
the magnitude of the task, I might not be able to complete my
Messages, I have completed as fully as possible those portions (the
first four volumes) of the first message that will be of greatest help
in assembling and using the rest of the manuscript. If these Nine
Volumes can be completed I will have fulfilled my greatest
responsibility—for which I have labored all my life—to carry to
the utmost limits my knowledge and exposition of mind and
Consciousness. Any one of these subjects always thrills me and
fill me to the brim with joy.”
To him books had always meant more than just for reading, as
expressed many years before in this way: “To pass hours in reverie

or fancy, to spend hours in self-examination under certain forms of

religious excitement, to make unscientific analyses and syntheses
to create grotesque images, bizarre ideas, to fill the mind with
disconnected images, unscientific concepts, and ataxic
[page 447]
ideas of unsystematic reading—such kinds of mentation destroy
the taxis and healthfulness of the mind. We are as a nation making
a careless use of our libraries and literature in general. It is a
responsible task to write or read a book.”
His researches had proved that there was much more to
education than books, and convinced him that there was no better
way to help humanity than by the psychurgic system of education.
It was based on a heurotechnically revealed knowledge of the true
nature of mind (and its immanent Consciousness); it was patterned
after the mental habits and capacities and skills of geniuses—
normal geniuses. If the natural geniuses who have been born into
this world could have had a psychurgic education, there would
have been ten thousand great men for each genius the world has
allowed to develop and bear fruit. The push and pull of a greater
number of geniuses, and especially of heurotechnically trained
ones, would be great enough to overcome the stupidity and
selfishness and lethargy and oppression and brutality of the world.
They would take pleasure only in instituting the good (the true,
desirable, useful) so that the civilization proceeding from them
would partake of the beautiful; the state would be merely a
mentative tool used for bringing about the equal welfare and
happiness of all individuals and races.
This psychurgic system of education, the elements of which
were described in the earlier chapters of this book, was outlined in
nontechnical form in Volume IV and its writing completed in
1921. It gave a glimpse of the World Work from the business
standpoint (to get facilities), the perfection and application of
psychurgy being the fundamental World Work. Two of its most
important aspects were stressed: that heurotechny directed the
whole individual and social organism and environment to the
attainment of the new; and that alethics showed that, by the art of
validation, the new must also be true. It outlined psychurgic
educational training from sensations and images through thoughts
of the five degrees. The psychurgic education was applicable to an
activities of life. It demonstrated that when a datum of
[page 448]
knowledge was first learned, it should be quickly transformed into
conduct-habits by psychurgic practice. Intellective guidance must
be based on truth, and the only truth known for sure was validated

knowledge, which when psychotaxically organized was science.

All the data of the Six Groups of sciences could be learned by
psychurgic methods and facilities by the time a pupil ordinarily
completed high school, but first all that which was not knowledge
must be eliminated. That which was not validated was not
knowledge, for it may not be true, as ninety-nine times out of a
hundred, in the history of the sciences and arts, the guesses and
speculations and theories have borne out.
Without his laboratories to demonstrate his inventions it
became increasingly difficult to raise money; and his new powers
of cognosis also made business even less appealing to Gates. In
addition he wasted two years during the war (1917-18) trying to
make a deal for his war inventions until convincing evidence
proved he was being blocked by organized interests. Malicious
gossip also hindered. In 1916, in a letter to his friend of many
years, Edwin Baltzley, he wrote: “Present prospects do not believe
me . . .. Those who are most sure I can do what I claim are busiest
undermining me. One fellow said ‘Gates can make almost
everybody believe anything,’ thinking, no doubt, that the claims of
mine were untrue. Now these claims were true but of startling and
unusual character
. . .. It is true I can make almost anybody believe anything I will
undertake to tell them because I will tell only what I can prove true
if given the opportunity.”
Baltzley, inventor of many things—including the common
office paper clip—wrote to Gates in the same year urging that a
new start be made with actual models of some small inventions to
be built in Baltzley’s experimental shop:
I do not think anyone could be more keenly alive to the

situation than I, and the injustice being done to you. For nearly
fifteen years I fought against the slander of malaria at Glen
Echo [a real estate development on the Potomac in
[page 449]
which he lost his fortune]. I could not believe such a barefaced
lie would ultimately prevail, but it did. Now you are facing a
similar situation—a slander, a double-dead lie, a poison in the
minds of the source of all information about you that kills and
deadens all effort in your favor. You cannot get money on
your Washington reputation. (The big debt was never
understood and was damning evidence.) You can get money at
times by promising to sell an invention worth billions for a few
hundred or a few thousand dollars to bridge over some awful
chasm, but the result is infinite complications and
embarrassments.

It was an apt description of Gates’ financial struggles at that

time.
Of him Baltzley also wrote: “For thirty-three years in the
privacy of his laboratories he has worked toward one great end—
the conquest of mind. . . . He has plotted and mapped the dark
continent of the mind; he has conquered and named the elusive
mental genii and trained them to human service. And out of this he
has wrought his system of education.”
Gates had written wonderingly in youthful verses, “I wonder
where the Whichway’s gone.” But he now knew which way.
Sometime after leaving Chevy Chase he wrote: “I have still before
me the opportunity of making further discoveries about
Consciousness if the force of The Whole, immanent in
Consciousness, will but continue its functioning. Profoundly do I
feel and believe this to be my mission—the meaning of my life. I
will therefore assiduously and religiously push forward toward all
the discoveries possible to my mind, hoping ere I die, in respect to
the possibilities of my mentation: ‘To glow a moment on the
extremest verge.’”
Back in 1901 he had written: “Let justice shape my motives,
thoughts and deeds; let truth alone be regnant in my speech; and let
universal love my conduct guide. So let me live my life—so let
me die.”
[page 450]
It was his custom to keep the manuscripts of his books on open
shelves, where he could from time to time revise any portion in
keeping with his latest discoveries and conclusions. His literary
work was thus cumulative, so it is not always possible to assign
dates to a piece of writing. But in 1922, at the instigation of a
young publisher, Gates assembled a short popular account of his
work with special emphasis on the psychologic basis for a new and
improved mental therapeutics and character-analysis. This
booklet, called Mind and Brain, did not appeal to the popular tastes
of the publisher, and also did not suit Gates, so he substituted
another version, Mind and the Art of Using It. Not completely
satisfied with it, Gates never released the second booklet to the
publisher. These two booklets did, however, give some of Gates’
later conclusions and summaries, expressed as non-technically as
possible, and helped somewhat to interpret his main manuscripts.
His foreword, in stressing the value of mind, emphasized that any
of the utopias and meliorisms of the future must be created by the
mind working with the world-process. In the concluding summary
of a short history of scientific method, he modestly claimed that in
his little laboratories scientifically directed mental methods were

first begun. And he wrote: “The Work is to be transferred as soon

as possible to psychurgic pupils so I may be free to carry on further
researches along lines for which I am fitted, and I hope with the
same unremitting, joyous, dominant devotion and consecration and
unswervable urge that has always seemed as fully behind my
predilective efforts as if the World Work were part of the
purposive goings-on of the COSMOS-CONQUERING
CONSCIOUSNESS.”
He longed for a con amore laboratory near a grove of trees!
One could get what he was seeking—insight, inspiration, idea—in
the woods, if one was really in earnest and desired it (as desire-
prayer), he once remarked.
He hoped to commercialize his improved aerial inventions to
carry on the psychurgic work but found many obstacles. In a letter
to his associate, E. D. Pitt, he wrote in June 1922, that
[page 451]
“a well-known inventor saw my first-step zonal propeller in my
laboratory, and two days later described it in the press as his own,
but failed to get the zonal idea. Others to whom I had already
discussed my aerial inventions went to Europe after talking to him.
I cannot prove that they were responsible for the very secret
experiments in Europe about which we hear, but none of them had
any idea how to make a helicopter travel horizontally until I talked
to them. I have never quite believed that a man able to invent
would steal another man’s idea. My further discoveries have
improved my basic plans, but I must quit soon to devote my time
to my real work and not to invention. But I don’t want to delay.
You see, although I am looking as well as ever, I am most surely
liable to sudden death from the effects of the accident and heart
effects from worry. It has nearly happened twice recently and I
must be ready; and I am starting my real work, getting ready to
publish and put my affairs in shape. . . . If I keep free from worries
and get started I hope to succeed. I can now do three or even four
hours work daily, except worry days (which upset me for a week
by destroying what little sleep I get).”
On January 2, 1919, he had suffered an automobile accident
while trying to cross a street in a traffic jam. It was about 7 p.m.,
and raining, and the wet pavement reflected the car lights to
aggravate his quivering headache. Dodging two cars unexpectedly
appearing from around a trolley car, he was hit by a third car and
thrown somersaulting almost a hundred feet. He lay flat on his
back at home for over two months, his broken ankle in a cast, and
suffering from internal injuries, high blood pressure, and insomnia.
For two months his life was uncertain. In five months he was
walking without crutches, and wrote to a friend that at sixty years

of age his doctors credited his remarkable constitution with saving

his life. (“I could lecture again,” he wistfully remarked, “by
holding onto the table like this.”)
His mind was clear and active inventively along modern lines;
for instance, he wished to carry forward experiments,
[page 452]
uncompleted in his laboratories, that suggested useful
improvements in electronics and radio. In a letter of June 1922, he
wrote that he was almost certain he could generate radioactivity
very cheaply and turn it into cheap mechanical power. He could
build a dynamo—he had already tried it—that would produce a
continuous current without a commutator and that would be
noiseless for telephone and radio use. Based on previous
experiments, he could devise a system for calling any radio
receiver among a million and talk over it alone. He was convinced
he had discovered another method for transmitting sound and
energy that was different from the existing electrical system.
On his birthday, May 6, 1922, Gates wrote to his son Elmer,
Jr.: “Sixty-three years ago I began living a life that has led to many
of the best kind of results that fall to the lot of man. One is
children: four healthy and competent and loyal men and women.
“Life has also led my mind to many discoveries relating to the
way Mind makes discoveries and validates them; discoveries that
will systematize and regulate that process and make it a scientific
art; and this art (inadequately applied) has led to many inventions
along fundamental lines from which financial results should soon
be reaped . . . so I can get back to my real work, and put it in
concrete shape before I am too old. I feel I will be able to do this if
I get over financial worries and have the great stimulation of being
engaged in the installation of a Demonstrative Exhibit of the
improved and greatly extended scientific method (which is so new
it must be shown in concrete action and by teaching competent
pupils in a laboratory). This new scientific method is nothing like
the usual mental disciplines or logical modes of thought, or
research methods as now taught; it is a real and practical scientific
art of leading MIND to make more and better discoveries, which
are always the next steps in any science or art. It is not an art of
correcting premises and making logical deductions but the more
fundamental art of discovering premises and of validating them by
a criterion of truth
[page 453]
—all based on a more basic and true psychology. I must get all
this plainly before the world. It is by this that I will be
remembered and by which, I hope, my children and associates will

be honored. Not this or that discovery, but the most important

thing is the wider and more practical knowledge of the actual
process by which the mind of man has made discoveries and may
more easily make more and better ones. This greatest power of the
mind may be taken from the domain of haphazard empiricism and
developed into a teachable and more scientific art of using the
mind and utilizing Consciousness in discovering and validating
knowledge, in learning and teaching, in normalizing feelings, and
in inventively and creatively using these knowledges and feelings
and skills for human betterment.”
Gates had already proved the adverse effect of unpleasant
emotions on health (catabolism) early in his researches on the
chemistry of the emotions; and during these later days he was
again proving all too well the destructive effects of worry. “Eight
different lines of worry,” he wrote; and he was unable to overcome
its deadening weight by the practice of his art. Earlier he had
written that emotive dirigation had many times enabled his mind to
“keep sorrow in abeyance and worry at arm’s length.” He could
truthfully say that so far in his life perhaps not a single day had
passed without more pleasure than displeasure—and this even of
the unhappiest days.
During the worst part of the Chevy Chase crisis, with the loss
of his beloved laboratories imminent, his father-in-law and
appreciative friend Milan Edson had written to him in June 1908:
“In passing through such a nerve prostrating crisis as this, that you
can still serenely go forward doing your best work on your book is
the greatest possible tribute to the excellence of your Mind-art
system of training; it is more—the greatest mental demonstration
the world has yet known.”
One of his increasing worries was assuredly that he would not
live long enough to finish the Nine Volumes—his “book.”
Already too long, its scope was constantly being enlarged by new
[page 454]
discoveries. “My book,” he had written years before, “like the
banyan tree, is ever taking new root.” And of successors to his
work he had found none. In his last “Guide to Memoranda,” in
October 1923, he wrote: “Little can be done with my manuscript
on psychurgy unless I live to put it in better shape. Most of those
who think they know about my affairs have gone entirely astray
with unscientific beliefs.”
He also realized that he would not live to organize his long
planned institutional World Work to develop its Great Persons into
World Workers. Taken from Whitman’s language, the Great
Person became a technical term for an accomplishment in the

higher stages of psychurgic personurgy. Gates had written in his

Studentship Propaedeutic during his sophic dominancy of 1910:
“The Great Person sees the future as the present, the present as
a vestibule to things on their way. He knows that the real goals are
of two kinds: one coming to fruition hour by hour in making the
daily life happy; the other far in the future. He has courage to
accept a lifelong sacrifice for his cause, abandoning emoluments,
accepting the indifference and misrepresentation of his
contemporaries, forsaking much that would render his life happier,
in order to attain growths and insights which he covets, and not to
give out to the unready that which is sacred. It is not easy to
forego the easy and comfortable social prizes of one’s day and
generation, but having espoused one’s life and its mission in trust
for humanity, he refuses to waste time and attention on things not
for the greatest good. There must be those who look ahead, who
go so far that the procession loses sight of them, else no one would
know the general course the pilgrimage should take. If he fulfills
his predilection he will go very far ahead, into the frontiers where
the usual sympathies of his fellows cannot follow—far ahead and
terribly alone. So far he will have to report through intermediaries
who are not so far ahead and who modify the message so some
small part of it will be understood and accepted. Immediate
understanding of the highest and best discoveries is out of the
question. He has the courage to Plan and carry out a work which
he knows will require his whole efficient
[page 455]
lifetime; and that before the work is finally put together as a
finished job he will be an old man.
“The greatest heroism is not needed for war or dangerous
exploration. The danger is death, then the trouble is over; and even
during the struggle there are the benumbing effects of excitement
and present danger. But when there is a lifelong sacrifice to be
made of emoluments, wealth, and fame; when the deprivation must
be privately endured with no applause for great struggles; when his
enormous sacrifices bring none of the helpful distinctions that
come to lesser philanthropists, often contumely; when a dozen like
struggles confront him, making life difficult and empty of
everything except the satisfaction of his work—then it requires a
true heroism to keep on.
“In the night time of the greatest difficulties, from the
overarching sky of new insights shine a whole constellation of
fixed purposes by which he guides his life, knowing thereby he
will walk aright until the dawn when he can see his way again. He
knows and feels his place in the world scheme. Every living
creature has its own ordained place in the Cosmic Process: its own

work to do, its own evangel to promulgate according to its Level

and Uplift. For the Great Person the Level is high and the Uplift
noble and his Evangel is a Bible for the race.
“Psychurgy is here and here to stay; it is in no hurry—it can
wait. Its aims will surely be accomplished, for they are nothing
more nor less than the nature of Consciousness. Sure of its
mission, it can select and train its workers with deliberation. It can
plan centuries ahead. The great psychurgist does not drive, he
leads; does not criticize, he loves; does not teach myths and
beliefs, he imparts Insights and Uplifts and teaches knowledge; he
demands not faith, he seeks abilities; does not require testimonials
and references, he studies and classifies purposes; he does not have
an inquisition, he holds high the ideal of alethification under the
Criterion of Truth. Whoso gazes, even for a moment of clear
vision, upon the Torch of Psychurgy will never again see any other
light.”
Psychurgy would have to wait!
[page 456]
Conditions and worries became insurmountable. “Rain, rain,
rain,” Gates had written in his diary as long before as the spring of
1911, “an incessant patter just as constant as that patter of worry
about affairs tomorrow and Monday and next week.” Unavoidably
one of those periods of stress and struggle was bound to lead to
those “infinite complications and embarrassments” about which his
friend Baltzley had warned. As one result, on July 29, 1923, Gates
suffered a stroke of paralysis and was critically ill for a few weeks.
His muscular functions were impaired, but his mental faculties
were unaffected.
But the Message—the Twelve Volumes—who would complete
it? The new world of Mind, the supernal Cosmos of
Consciousness—it was there! Who would carry on the Mind Art
and retrace Elmer Gates’ steps to more glorious discovery and
experience? Would future students, inspired by the insights of
psychurgy and empowered by its superior methods, realize the
promise of Gates’ discoveries? One of his former students, Marian
Lowell, had expressed her feelings this way: “Through your
teachings shall perfection of humanity be attained. A better, truer,
happier people will arise and call you blessed. Truly your work
will live after you!”
Of life Gates had once written: “O this fair and beautiful
world—to those who are healthy and happy! The main thing to do
in this world is to enjoy living while you have life. Sit as a
spectator in the theater of life and increasingly enjoy all that is
experienced from the time the curtain of unconsciousness first rises
and reveals the splendid drama of Consciousness until it again

falls. It is not making a living, not fame, not this or that object that
is usually pursued but the joy of living day by day that is worth
most: witnessing the incomparable objective drama of the Cosmos
and the equally incomparable drama of the inner consciousness.
“A man’s life is just that much of the Cosmic Process that is
taking place. Man is materially, dynamically, and psychologically
part of the Universe and of the same nature as The All. It
[page 457]
is not merely man’s nature he is enacting when he wills what is
eternally and universally true, but also the nature of the Cosmos!
“To fully insight The One Process as causatively cognostic, in
which the cognitive is an effect, you will, at moments of the
realization of this stupendous ONENESS, truly live!”
And so Elmer Gates lived—not only in “this fair and beautiful
world “ but for great moments in that hitherto undiscovered
Cosmos of Consciousness of which he brought the first scientific
report.
Even if compelled “to sit as a spectator,” Gates was
undismayed. In late October he wrote to his son Elmer, Jr.: “I had
an extensive reputation in psychological lines the world over and
gave impetus to many of the psychological labors now going on.
In my teachings also will be found many of the first tendencies of
our best modem life. All my life I have been engaged at the new
system of education and research and validation, and I never intend
to let up but to go ahead just as though I had not been afflicted.
While doing this I will also carry forward my aerial inventions.”
Of all the usual professions, he once thought that being a
physician would have been the most rewarding to him. Still
capable of self-diagnosis, in the last letter of his life (November
11, 1923) he wrote to a possible associate who wanted him to
establish his work on the West Coast: “Only an occasional patient
of my kind ever gets well from kidney affection. I have not been
out of the house since my stroke last July. The difficulty is not
with my mind but with my kidneys, and the damage has already
been done; it cannot be cured but only arrested and kept quiescent
during a hopeful long life of usefulness and happiness if I really
take care of myself. . . . I have to be waited on constantly day and
night by a competent and specially trained nurse. My physician
believes I have the care and disposition to get well. My one nurse
has to do the work of two, also attend to all matters of diet and
personal needs and do my correspondence. This
[page 458]
is a rare combination of abilities, and very few could physically or
mentally stand what she does. She is not stimulated toward this

great effort by the financial interest in my books that I have given

her—and most of which she has typed—but by her intellectual
interest in The Message which transcends all other ones.”
She was his sister-in-law, the faithful Pearlie—student (when
time was rarely available), secretary, typist, business assistant, and
family coordinator. She was with him to the last, until his death a
few weeks later on December 3, 1923, at 12:45 A.M. She
remembered his last words: “So it has to be this way!”
And time—“all there is”—was for him no more.
No fanfare of eulogies, no monuments; only the manuscripts,
only the family sorrow and the simple funeral service conducted by
his friend the Reverend U. G. B. Pierce, with burial in the Higbee-
Edson grave at Glenwood Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Only a
few treasured keepsakes remained: a lock of brown hair tied with a
ribbonbow of old-fashioned feminine remembrance, a few letters
from the children, a few photographs, a piece of feather clipped in
a V-shape—Zufii token of engagement for marriage, meaning
peace and prosperity, sent by Cushing for that happy day of long
ago—and a handstamp of the seal of the Elmer Gates Laboratory,
relic of the great moment of Chevy Chase.
Gates was not the first scientist to die without worldly goods.
His good friends, Professor McGee, Major Powell, and Frank
Hamilton Cushing, had left only their contributions to science, to
which they had willingly dedicated their lives. Gates left his
manuscripts, representing a lifetime of effort, as a guidebook for
pioneers in the new domains.
The ownership of these manuscripts had been assigned long
ago to Pearlie (who after his death kept them in security storage for
twenty more years hoping always to find the opportunity to have
them edited and published). Of Pearlie, Gates had written in his
last will and memoranda: “To an almost incredible extent I was
given help during her long course of extraordinary
[page 459]
helpfulness and self-sacrifice for The Work. She did for me
clerical and amanuensis work with great efficiency and perfect
loyalty for over twenty years—and for less than one tenth the pay
she could have earned elsewhere. Without her help my many
valuable manuscripts would not now exist.”
Of Elmer Gates, Pearlie wrote that an article on “My Most
Unforgettable Character” might read as follows:
His devotion to a lifework, his genius as a lecturer and

writer and as a leader and teacher, his poetical and oratorical
gifts, the way he could recite Walt Whitman or Ingersoll or
Omar Khayyam or Sidney Lanier or many others, his

generosity and “impracticalness,” his love for his children, his

liking to play practical jokes, his medical knowledge and his
calm and competent ministrations to the sick in his household,
his encyclopedic knowledge about any subject anyone ever
mentioned, his kindly treatment of everyone who worked for
him in any capacity, as kind to the cook or maid as to the
chemist assisting in the laboratory . . . tyrannical in holding
one’s loyalty and devotion, the expounder of the highest ideals
and teller of most earthy jokes, the gift of making people feel
that each had a special talent, a great personal magnetism that
drew people to him, a deeply religious insight and a gourmet’s
knowledge and liking for good food, a love of music and the
inability to carry a tune . . . childlike and simple, deep and
subtle, altogether a fascinating, lovable, interesting, thought-
provoking, unforgettable person.
[page 460: blank]

The Three Messages of Elmer Gates
[page 461]
PART FOUR
My Message! My mission! How it has risen above and

overshadowed all else in my life. It is my aim and plan, my dream
by night and vision by day, my Promised Land, my deepest insight
and strongest impulse, my dominant desire, my main achievement,
my joy and my goal. It is my mode of self-expression, my meaning
to the world; my life!
My First Message is the writing of The Twelve Volumes; my

Second Message is the Institutional Work with its Demonstrative
Exhibit of Science Teaching; my Third Message is the Teachers
and Pupils Association, for the higher steps can be imparted and
carried on in no other way than by the paideutic method. This is
the true way of propagandizing psychurgy.—ELMER GATES
[page 462]
0 the presumption of it: The audacity of the claim that I have a
World-Message! But I would not dare assume such a
responsibility on my own. In the first place I have merely been led
to point out the significant meanings, the trends and tendencies,
and the religious message of modern science. The intrinsic nature
of that message is inevitably the paramount importance of an art of
using the mental powers by which science is being created, its data
are validated, and by which they are applied. The tendencies and
processes which have produced science and philosophy and
religion, if continued, could not fail to have produced psychurgy;
and psychurgy could not fail to have produced the discovery of
cognosis. It is the MIND-PROCESS that has revealed and
formulated this message, and led to the discovery of an authority
higher than human; and it is to this, to the cognostic mode of
knowing and its indubitable criterion, that I point. Upon cognosis
I lay the responsibility for the Message, insofar as I have
succeeded in getting it, humbly asking that all errors of my
interpretation may soon be weeded out by the methods which have
been discovered. The cognistic student will not at all comprehend
these statements—they will seem extravagant and mystical. But
the pupil with cognostic ability will understand; to such will come
a knowledge and recognition of verities beyond the Levels of
cognition, and they will know beyond doubt that the cognostic
message comes from the regnancy which governs all times in all
worlds, from that which abides while all our temporal and local
affairs pass away. I would not venture so elaborately and
carefully to write an account of my researches were it not that my

methods have succeeded, for the first time, in getting

Consciousness to give an account of itself. It is not the ephemeral
conscious states of a human mind that is giving this message: it is
the cosmic nature of Consciousness itself that is speaking.
—ELMER GATES
[page 463]
CHAPTER 21
The First Message:
The Twelve Volumes
The greatest thing ever done for me, that can ever be done for
any man of earnest life, you did for me. You confirmed me to
myself; you showed me, that is, the indubitable truth and rightness
of certain modes of thought. . . . This and much more to greater
men is what you have to do for others too.
–FRANK HAMILTON CUSHING to ELMER GATES (1894)
It requires more judgment and experience with human affairs

to carry a truth to the world than to discover it.
— ELMER GATES, studentship writings
“I have gotten to the point for which I yearned,” wrote Gates,

“where I can give my Message without colorings, and truthfully.”
And his Synopsis of the Twelve Volumes first appeared in his May
1910 edition of the manuscript of Volume 1. The introductory
page reads: “An Outline of Psychurgic Propaedeutics and
Paideutics in Twelve Volumes. An Automathic and Pedagogic
System of Instructions, Trainings, Insights, and Uplifts for Freeing
the Pupil from Trammels in Environment
[page 464]
and Mind for Using the Manuscripts and Other Facilities and
Establishing Favorable Conditions for Learning and Practicing
Psychurgy.”
The volumes are dedicated simply and sincerely:
“DEDICATION”
“These volumes have been prepared for those who earnestlv

desire more fully and skillfully to use their minds in discovering,
learning, teaching, and practically applying intellection,
introspection, esthesis, and all their voluntary personal powers to

their own growth and to the betterment of humanity; and who, with
that end in view, are eager to get more closely and vitally in touch
with Mind and Consciousness so they may utilize their more
fundamental modes of knowing in discovering and validating
knowledge, in testing and acquiring skill, in evaluating esthesias,
and in utilizing the domains that lie under and above what is
ordinarily known as the conscious mind in making a better
adaptation, not only to things local and temporal but also to things
universal and eternal.
“The author humbly and gratefully dedicates the Mentative
Art, herein so incompletely and imperfectly imparted and
expounded, to the CONSCIOUS PROCESS by which it was
produced, and by which TRUTH and Happiness are becoming ever
more regnant over LIFE.”
The classific outline of the Synopsis of the Twelve Volumes

uses many technical terms, difficult to explain to one who has not
had laboratory training, so it will not be given here. Its scope may
be appreciated from the following general description.
The Synopsis shows three groups corresponding to the three
Degrees of Studentship: the 1st Degree or Cognistics (Volumes I to
V); the 2nd Degree or Cognostics (Volumes VI to IX) ; and the 3rd
Degree or Sophics, including Superpaideutics (Volumes X to XII).
They are outlined in seven Grades, fourteen Stages, seven Great
Planes.
[page 465]
The capitalized word “Plane” means the characteristic and
typical degree of mind-embodiment possessed by the pupil. It
indicates the general degree of evolutionary development. Thus
there is the degree characterized by a dominancy of the organic
feelings and appetites, by simple conations for their satisfaction,
and by perception (sensating, imaging, conceptuating, and
ideating) as the degree of intellective attainments. This is the First
Plane. Then there is a higher degree of evolution characterized by
a dominancy of the emotions (affectional, esthetic, musical, or
otherwise), by a higher order of voluntary activity (emotive
boulation), and by thoughts of the first, second, third, or fourth
degrees of generalization. This is the Second Plane. There is a
higher degree characterized by the sentiments, by a still higher
order of voluntary activity (sentimentic boulation) and by science,
philosophy, and religion as hitherto known. This is the Third
Plane. There is a still higher degree of purpose-urging (telusis), a
higher order of voluntary activity (telation), and a psychurgically-
rectified synthetic science and philosophy and religion. This is the
Fourth Plane. Finally there is the beginning of the New Type of

feeling, knowing, and acting that is characterized by desire for

being in its fullness, by cognostically-directed activity, and by
cognitively apprehended cognostology. These are the Fifth, Sixth,
and Seventh Planes.
Each Plane has its “Levels,” consisting in the psychotaxic
degrees of integration and generalization of knowledge-
attainments. Each Plane has its “Powers” of integrative degrees of
the doing-abilities inherited or achieved by any person, such as
predilection or genius capacity. Each Plane has its “Uplift” of the
integrative degrees of inherited or acquired feelings, emotions, and
sentiments.
“Stage” refers to the kind of knowledge, doing, and feeling that
forms the subject matter of instruction at any time, it being
understood that the pupil has mastered all previous Stages—not by
passing the usual examinations but by having made those Stages an
actuality in his life, with full insight into every phase.
[page 466]
There are fourteen Stages—one for each volume except for
Volume XI, which comprises three Stages.
“Grade” refers to the technical skill achieved by the pupil, and
to the kind of training he is prepared to receive and is receiving.
There are seven Grades.
“Insights” are understandings (cognic, urgic, esthic) of a
subject as a whole, but in which there are also factors contributing
other than mere cognition—namely, cognitively apprehended
cognocepts. There are Level-Insights, Power-Insights, and Uplift-
Insights, which have to be imparted by the special methods of
psychurgic paideutics, in which the teacher builds exclusively
upon previously acquired Insights.
The First, or Propaedeutic Stage (Volume I) is an outline of
Psychurgic Paideutics and prepares the pupil for a 1st Degree
Studentship and initiates him into Lessons preparing for Volume
II.
The Second, or Transitional Stage (Volume II) acquaints him
with the Planes of human development and an understanding of
cognitions. It leads him to make the actual transition to the
psychurgic life and trains him in communicative exposition,
including Symbolotechny and the Glossary.
The Third, or Cognignosturgic Stage (Volume III) deals with
the psychology of sensation, intellection, and introspection
(collectively called cognignosis). It gives an outline of the states,
processes, and volitionally directed activities of the intellect,
showing it is an interpretive knowledge of objective and subjective
things according to the abilities and limitations of a person in a
local and temporal environment. It explains the principle of

psychological classification, outlines the method of intellective

validation, and points the way to intellectual normality and
freedom. It shows that a psychological classification of the
intellections relating to any domain of nature is at the same time a
classification of the scientific data of that domain. It describes the
new methods and kinds of introspection, points out the most
conspicuous things in this inner world, shows there is an
introspective classification of the mind’s content that must be made
[page 467]
before it is worthwhile to apply other methods of validation, and
points the way to introspective freedom and normality.
The Fourth, or Cogniturgative Stage (Volume IV) deals with
voluntary activities from the simplest to the most complex acts,
classifies the urgations showing that the simplest (conations) are
the units of compound urgations (boulations), and that these in turn
are units in telation. It introduces the pupil to the most
fundamental of all trainings (askeotechnics and chreotechnics) by
which psychurgy is applied, not to this or that faculty merely, but
to the whole person as a unit (auturgy) and to the whole social
group as a unit (sociurgy). It classifies human activities and points
the way to freedom and normality in human effort. The most
valuable feature of this Stage is heurotechny (the art of discovering
the new) as applied to cognignosis and urgation.
The Fifth, or Eunesthesiurgic Stage (Volume V) is an
application of the methods of psychotaxis to the esthesias (organic
feelings, appetites, affections, emotions, sentiments) producing an
esthesotaxis. It shows the effects of feelings and emotions on the
excretions and secretions, and how this and their taxonomic range
constitute two steps in the evolution of the esthesias; and outlines
other steps toward a scientific eunesthesis. These principles are
applied to the development of an art of regulating and utilizing the
esthesias (esthesiurgy), with applications to the fine arts and
Synthetic Esthetics. The relation of feeling and emotion to art is
discussed from a new standpoint. The main idea of this volume is
that the good and happy esthesias may be rendered dominant and
the unpleasant ones diminished so that life will be much happier
(eunesic) and more vital energy will be produced; that happiness is
a means as well as an end; and that the esthesias are the motives of
conduct. Therefore the evaluation of motives in order to select the
highest and best ones for guidance is even more important than the
validation of knowledge.
The Sixth through the Ninth Stages (Volumes VI-IX) cover the
2 Degree Studentship in Cognostics. The 3rd Degree Studentship
nd

[page 468]
includes the Tenth through the Fourteenth Stages. Volume X, the
Tenth Stage, refers to philosophy. Volume XI comprises the
Eleventh Stage—the religion of knowing and contemplation, the
Twelfth Stage—the religion of action, and the Thirteenth Stage—
the religion of organesis. Volume XII describes the Fourteenth
Stage, Superpaideutics.
The final synthesis of cognistics and cognostics as knowledge
takes place in our actual interpretation of these knowledges. The
final synthesis of cognistics and cognostics as action takes place in
the actual doing of our knowledge and feeling. The final synthesis
of cognistics and cognostics as feeling, emotion, and sentiment
takes place in our actual enjoyment of life. To these ends the
psychurgic philosophy and religion have something new and
important to offer. Synthetics points out the new ruler of the
world, lays down the basic principles according to which all that is
practical and desirable in utopian schemes and Millennial Eras
may be attained—if ever. This new world ruler, to which
humanity must submit in order to escape a perpetual repetition of
the sufferings through which it has passed, is the whole body of
(alethified) cognitive and cognostic knowledge, synthesized and
used for the skillful carrying out of (askeotechnically) selected
purposes for the attainment of right esthesias.
Elmer Gates believed that he would be of greater service if not
hampered by selfish interests, and devoted his whole self and
person to allowing his mind to bear fruit while it was naturally
active. The uninterrupted lifework of forty-five years was summed
up in these Twelve Volumes; not finished products, as he said, but
“outlines of work to be accomplished and suggestions of work to
be done, of insights to be further verified, of methods to be
improved.” The main work remained to be done by future students
of psychurgy. “If your mind does not teach so you cannot doubt
that I have pointed out the true process and method of knowledge-
getting,” he said, “then all I say are my own conclusions. If we
can get together all the data, however, we can both experience
them.”
[page 469]
A more detailed aspect may be appreciated by briefly
considering askeotechnics, which is the technology of mind-
training and of selecting from an inconceivably vast number of
possible states and acts those that may be available and useful for
accomplishing telurgically determined purposes. It is based on re-
functioning only the useful states and processes. The scientifically
determined principles of this selective askeotechnics (called
chreotechnics) are the sifting machine of psychurgy. A system of

marks, symbols, and diagrams is used to indicate the kind of

training and its order. A psychotaxic unit or state is selected and
trained, both as a state and as a process, by causing it to be re-
functioned, dirigated, introspected, and used in normal ways in a
certain order, the resulting seven different kinds of states being
either good or bad. On any of these the six psychurgic operations
(of Chapter 15) may be applied, but preferably not to the bad
states. A good or bad state may be wholly false or true
intellectually, wholly happy or unhappy esthesically, wholly
skillful or unskillful conatively, right or wrong personally or
socially; but in nearly all states its elements are both good and bad.
A state organesthesically pleasant may be harmful physiologically;
ideas that are false may produce temporary emotions of happy
interest; or a conation that is skillful may be directed by wrong
motives. In this sense a state may be both good and bad. The
good elements in psychal states, even in the most evil people, are
generally in the majority, but the bad states are functionally
dominant. It does not take a long or difficult psychurgic training to
supplant this criminal or immoral tendency with a good and
wholesome one.
By an interesting computation Gates estimated that there were
over 168,000 states, as a minimum, derivable from a single mental
(psychal) state by these operations. But the possible number that
could have arisen, through ignorance or perversity, out of the bad
states—such as false intellections, unhappy esthesias, unskillful
conations, painful organic feelings, anguish and worry, doubt and
jealousy, hate and speculation—was practically
[page 470]
infinite. There was no greater opportunity to practice a
fundamental economy, hevpointed out, than by psychurgic
methods, which would save thevhuman race from wasting time
with a few myriad millions of worse-than-useless states that
usually made up 95 percent of the mental activity of each
generation.
The number of complex states that result from psychurgic
operations upon simple states is so vast that we need have no fear
that the possibilities of the human mind will soon be exhausted.
There is potential optimism that not 1 percent of this projected
ground has ever been surveyed. If there were not an art of dealing
with this stupendous number of states, the task would be hopeless.
It would indeed be so if it were not for psychotaxis with its
incredible characteristic for reducing the data classification of any
science. Other aids are the greater system and brevity of the new
methods of ideating and thinking, of symbolism, marking, and
diagramming, the extraordinary increase in celerity and accuracy

and ease of the mentating processes brought about by the

psychurgic training, and the elimination of bad states (including
theory and hypothesis).
What are the main lessons of psychurgy? Gates listed them
this way: “art of mind-using, nature of mind as interaction of
organism and environment, Consciousness and knowledge as the
mind builder and normalizer with data from every domain,
predilections and genius-capacities as self-expression and norm
and guide, subconscious as slave and tool, systematic building of
mind and feeling and skills, learning based on fundamental mental
processes of likenessing and differencing, percept the unit of
memory, personality the result of dominancies, the normal as
naturalistic Plane, psychotaxis, telurgy, utility of the anabolic,
metabolism of happiness, the infantile curriculum, brain-building
and mind-embodiment, mind as growth, art of discovery and
invention, a Cosmos of Consciousness. Psychurgic education is
based on a new psychology of intellection: it is a psychurgic, or
mind-using, psychology of cognition. Psychurgy makes the
impossible easy. Scientific knowledge is essentially revelation,
and psychurgy is the formulation of a natural religion.”
[page 471]
Gates emphasized certain points as follows: “I hope I have
made it plain that when Consciousness is free to travel without
being led by the halter of theory it takes the natural road of cosmic
development; when the mind is unfettered it follows its immanent
bent that is the cosmic tendency; when the conscious process is not
misdirected by false ideas it goes by straight paths to its natural
culmination. Consciousness is as much a cosmic force as gravity
or motion or heat. A logical process is true because it is cosmic
and in keeping with Reality, and truth is cosmic and not of our
making.
“The psychurgist looks to the regulation of mind and
environment by Consciousness as the cause, method, and goal of
all progress, and in the cosmic nature of Consciousness he finds a
justified rational trust in life and the cosmos. The religious nature
of science, art, and life will not be appreciated without the insight
that most of the mind of an individual is not a property of his
individuality, but of that which is immanent in existence as a
whole and in Consciousness in particular.
“It is often impossible to convey an insight by means of
language. Descriptive and speculative expedients must be used: it
is in this way I have sometimes used them and my opinions. The
main teachings and methods of psychurgy are based on data that
are unquestionably facts and in no way based on theory. The most
important facts, however, cannot be known by usual methods but

require cognostic ability. Mere belief and faith in the old sense
have naught to do with success in dirigation or regulation of the
subconscious processes or mentation: knowledge and skill take
their place. Mind-embodiment and brain-building are facts
irrespective of any interpretation.
“False images, fairy tales, myths—however beautiful or
entertaining— would be still more beautiful to a normal mind if
they were true. It is better to fill the mind with fact rather than
fiction, and with only actually known knowledge instead of
theory—these should be the basis of conduct-guidance. Only facts
must be used in the mentative synopsis: nothing we only believe or
hope to be true, even if sure it will turn out to be true.
[page 472]
“My laboratories have been used mainly for my studies in
psychology and psychurgy. An entirely new science has been
discovered—cognostology—and out of it grows a new philosophy
and a newreligious attitude and insight.”
In another part of his manuscripts Gates remarked: “Purposes
are the most important factors in a life, and only Self has purposes.
It is not by mental activities or such, nor by bodily activities, nor
by the organized purposes that the true auturgic Powers are
acquired, but by the activities of the Self. Purposing is the way to
get acquainted with Consciousness. Mere bulk of intellective or
esthesic content makes us acquainted with things and our
appreciation of them, and cognosis acquaints us with the states
and processes of the content of Consciousness—all of which is
wonderful enough—but it does not bring us face to face with the
main and most significant reality in Consciousness. Only through
pure and unmixed purposing do we finally insight the most
important feature of Consciousness: its Self-Activity. Only by
self-activitying (activating) do we finally get to know the self-
activating that is the most conspicuous phenomenon of cognosis
AFTER ONCE RECOGNIZED; and when we know this
Selfitating, we know the Self; and when we know the Self, we
know the Person; and then, and not before, we know the mind as a
mental person, which is the psychologic body and tool of
Selfhood. Consciousness as a process is as mercilessly indifferent
to us as heat or electricity, but as a self-activating Self as a selfed
Personity, it is something quite different and more truly worth
knowing than anything else whatsoever in the whole range of
experience.”
In the “General Preface to Psychurgy,” in Volume I of his
planned Nine Volumes, Gates had this to say about his Message.
(Adapted.)

An actual new process or phenomenon has been pointed out

that is worth studying. The mind is so wondrous a phenomenon, its
possibilities are so far-reaching, Consciousness is so mysterious
[page 473]
(yet the best known of all things), its processes and states are so
multitudinous, its relations to the Cosmos so intimate, that we may
expect it to require a long, long course of scientific investigation
(centuries and thousands of years even) to attain to an
approximately complete knowledge of any of these subjects. In
any of the new domains we may therefore expect to do little more
than point out the domain and show how to derive benefit from it.
My inventory and description of the fundamental experiences of
Consciousness with itself (the cognocepts) may be incomplete or
incorrect, but the important point is whether there are such
absolutely known data; and if I have given enough of an insight to
enable others to carry it to completion.
Out of the contrast between cognisis and cognosis, and out of
alethics, has arisen a new or psychurgic epistemology—one that is
no longer a metaphysical speculation but a science. And if the
reader does not arrive at an insight into the local, temporal,
relative, and individualistic nature of cognisis as compared with
the universal, eternal, absolute, and non-individualistic nature of
cognosis, he will miss the best these volumes offer; he will not
understand my allusions to many things, and will not see the
incomparable beauty and meaning of the psychurgic World Work.
If the content of a mind determines its attitude toward
circumstances and shapes its conduct, then it behooves us to ask,
What kind of content is best? These volumes answer that question,
chiefly by disclosing the method by which it may ever be more
fully answered. The answer is the crux of science, philosophy, and
religion. If the mind is not furnished with an interpretation of the
world based on knowledge and a scientific handling of our attitude
toward the Unknown, then it will adopt and tenaciously cling to
any speculation, myth, tradition, or belief that seems plausible; and
plausibility will be determined by the kind and amount of true and
false information and normality of feelings and emotions.
Our books, customs, religions, and habits of thought have come
to us out of a past that had no scientific method, out of
[page 474]
an age filled with superstitions, myths, and mystical dreams; and
we should not expect to emancipate ourselves immediately from
the influence of these ancient specters, ogres, and spells. The
battle of science against ignorance will be only a skirmish as
compared with the battle of systematized and validated knowledge

against All-That-Is-Not-Knowledge; for the Unproved, the Not-

Yet-Known, the Untrue, the Speculative, have been so long
inoculating our customs and beliefs and institutions that the
average human mind has become immune to the poison and does
not know to what extent delusion and illusion are being followed—
and this has extended to the whole social system. But true
intellectual freedom is slowly dawning. Those who have the
courage and integrity should manfully and womanfully enter
seriously into the campaign for the establishment of the
sovereignty of validated scientific knowledge. This is not an easy
task, but it holds the very best prizes of the future.
Scientific Method Is the First Planetary Culture. There was a
time when races and nations were comparatively unknown to each
other; each isolated country had its own peculiar beliefs and
customs. They were strangers to each other’s mental world. But
we have now for the first time entered an era of worldwide culture
along certain lines, so completely representing a world belief and
world-plan of action that it may be called a planetary culture.
Western civilization, equipped with that incomparable instrument,
scientific method, has created the modern world. This new culture
has very little to learn from the past or from oriental cultures,
looking instead to discoveries and inventions of gifted individuals
for guidance and progress, yet in psychurgy becoming more fully
conscious of its own method. It was part of the modem technique
of scientific method that organization for discovery had become
purposive, systematic, consciously seeking improvements; it
applied to backward fields of progress the methods that had been
fruitful in other fields. It applied the method of specialization and
focusing on a specific problem. All this was helped by the quick
communication of discoveries. The
[page 475]
special technique consisted in more or less abstract advice and
helps of systems of logic, or a rapidly developing (and still largely
wrong) experimental method based on testing alternate or opposing
hypotheses.
Psychurgy discovered the specific kinds of mental states and
processes of states and operations with these processes by which
knowledge is discovered and validated; it introduced the technique
of a specific kind of mind-embodiment and brain-building as the
necessary education of an investigator for the mechanism of
efficient and truthful mentation. Then it trained him in the art of
mentating (of sensating, imaging, conceptuating, ideating, and
thinking) and in the new methods of introspection; and in other
technical steps.

Psychurgy is a Consciousness Cultus. It is more than these

volumes; more than the several groups of already developed
psychurgic arts; more than the recognition of Genius as the
Revelator; more than science and its religious significance; more
than all that psychurgy has yet done. It is a new and definitely
unique and illuminative and exalting attitude toward Life and the
Cosmos of which Life is the chief Being, constituting a definite
cultus based on the indubitable knowledge and insight that looks to
the Consciousness that underlies and transcends the lowest as well
as the Highest, and knowing Consciousness to be the Teacher of
all lives in all worlds throughout all eternity. Whosoever once sees
that Consciousness is the Active Regnancy of the Existential
Cosmos will ever after look to it to solve all problems of all
creatures. Consciousness will most assuredly carry us to ever
higher Stages of knowledge, doing, feeling, and being.
Psychurgy is a new understanding and conception of Life (and
its activities and actions) as Consciousness and its activities and
acts. It approaches everything not merely from the “inner side”
and the mental side but from that which is inmost—namely, from
the Consciousness side. The mind is the child of Consciousness;
the ordinary life is mind in activity; Consciousness underlies life
and mind and is a more fundamental kind of
[page 476]
life. Psychology as hitherto known is a science of cognitive states
and processes; the psychurgic psychology is a cognosto-cognitive
one—that is, it comprises also a science of the Consciousness out
of which the cognitive states arise.
Psychurgy is not only the culmination and essence of the
modern spirit and purpose and method but the beginning of a
science-cult; or more basically, of a mind-cult; or still more
fundamentally, of a Consciousness-cultus. Is it not strange that
among all the cults that have arisen there has not hitherto been a
mind-using and Consciousness-utilizing cultus?
The most significant thing about psychurgy is the complete
abandonment of the whole cognitive self and person, and of the
whole cognostic Self and Person, and of all incentives and
purposes whatever, to the conviction that it is to Consciousness
alone that we must ultimately look for all that is True, Useful,
Beautiful, and Good; for better minds, a truer insight into religion,
and for all kinds of practical guidance to everyday life—and it is
Consciousness that must do the looking. To set-the-task-to
Consciousness and get it to cause itself to cognose (become
conscious of) Consciousness and thereby learn to know
Consciousness; to learn alethified knowledge about the objective
and subjective worlds and apply this knowledge to the betterment

of the local and temporal conditions, and thereby learn from

Consciousness itself about things universal and eternal-that is the
new Faith which is Knowledge and which at the same time is the
only true and real kind of Being and Doing.”
So concluded Elmer Gates. In his introductory inscription to

the Twelve Volumes he quoted Whitman:
Brain of the New World, what a task is thine,

To formulate the Modern-out of the peerless grandeur of
the modern,
Out of thyself, comprising science, to recast poems,
churches, art,
[page 477]
By vision, hand, conception, on the background of the
mighty past . . .
To limn with absolute faith the mighty living present.
And thou America . . .

For the scheme’s culmination.
[page 478]
“Now surely there lies before the human mind a
possibility greater than the discovery of a new, rich,
continent—some discovery relating to mental processes
vastly more important, capable of doing much more good.
Yet if its announcement were made with adequate scientific
proof, would it create any rush? I think not. Slowly,
spreading first to a few, then to more, then to groups of
people; slowly influencing this institution a little and that
one a little more—so will such a new truth be received.
“During the history of the world, as far as I have
studied it, all great movements and organizations, political
or religious, have centered about some philosophical
system or belief containing some truth and more error; and
the result has been that further progress and knowledge
have shown the error, and dismemberment has occurred. If
such an organization were to be effected around the
inductive truth of science without any admixture of theory,
then all future discoveries would be congruous with the
organization and it could then be perpetual.
—ELMER GATES, “Introspective Diary,” 1899

[page 479]
CHAPTER 22
The Second Message:
The Institutional Work
The amount of preparation required before I can teach the art

of mentation is so vast I sometimes shrink from undertaking it.
—ELMER GATES
At Chevy Chase the work of collecting from all languages

every word and definition relating to acoustics had been nearly
accomplished, and collating from textbooks the verifiable data of
acoustics had been well started. But when Gates set out to go over
two sciences experimentally and observationally, he estimated it
would take a thousand trained helpers ten years to do it. He also
found from long experience that psychurgy was not understood on
first or second presentation; readers of varying capacities required
several readings and some actual practice. There was the difficulty
of terminology. Most readers soon believed they understood that
Gates had been studying, by experimental methods, the mental
processes that constituted scientific method. But they thought he
meant more carefully-made apparatus and more skillful
experiments, and did not understand what he meant by states and
processes and mental methods by which truth was elicited from
these experiments.
[page 480]
Only by concrete illustration could he hope to make it
understood that alethic mentation was relationing the inductive
data of the psychotaxic pyramid of a science and not expending
energy on theories and hypotheses. Only by showing how it was
done could he hope to make it clear that such known data were the
true guides to discovery of the next logical step in the evolution of
that science, and that multiple hypotheses and theories were not
such guides. Only by concrete work in some one science could he
show what really were the images, concepts, ideas, thoughts, and
other intellections. Not one of his readers ever understood! He
was forced early to conclude that he could not publish his Message
by words alone, but must give it through pupils capable of teaching
and interpreting it, pupils who could demonstrate it by their own
work. In his studentship lessons, Gates pointed out that a great
secret of self-development was disclosed, but that it was so new to
the race that it was never recognized by students.
The first step in teaching psychurgy required the mastery of
some one science. Underlying this was the necessity for collection

and psychological classification of its inductive data. Then,

facilities must be made available to show every phenomenon of
that science experimentally. Such a Laboratory-Museum Exhibit
would also comprise apparatus for research and application. This
first step consisted in collecting the alleged data from the literature
of hundreds of thousands of volumes, and from the unrecorded
knowledge in the minds of specialists, to get rid of repetition—
recording no fact until re-observed by psychurgic methods and
trained mentators, and reclassified psychotaxically. Then the
special methods of paideutics could be applied to show all the
phenomena quickly and accurately in order to provide vivid states
of consciousness, to avoid untrue images, concepts, and ideas, and
to make the enregistrations while at maximum interest. When this
brain-building and mind-embodiment had been completed for one
science, the re-functional training of askeotechnics could be
applied to make the mentative dominancy;
[page 481]
and finally the mentator could be trained in further steps of the art
of extending knowledge of that science and inventively applying
and teaching it.
Gates had also intended the exhibit to demonstrate a number of
his discoveries and inventions, the mental methods and steps of
which would be psychotaxically illustrated. Surprisingly, more
than 95 percent would consist in mental states and processes and
not mere description of mechanism or operation of the invention.
The psychurgic method of science-teaching would demonstrate
that a science could be taught in very much less time, and far more
completely and accurately, than deemed possible. It would include
a concrete illustration of a psychotaxic group of phenomena
covering a classific part of some science, showing how objects
were arranged and handled to exhibit their relations of co-existence
and sequence and their imagive, conceptive, ideative, and
thoughtive relations and interactions. In this way multitudinous
details might systematically, quickly, and intelligibly be shown,
and a greater number of experiments made and understood than by
any other method. Corresponding to this object-grouping would be
a psychotaxic textbook in which had been inventoried the mental
integrants, prepared by laboriously working out and writing a
natural history of the mental states and processes relating to that
domain of knowledge.
From this exhibit one or more classes of pupils would be
trained. The pupils would then apply the methods to each one of
the other sciences and gradually create the proposed Institution of
Psychology and Psychurgy. By organizing a teaching department
they would slowly establish the proposed Psychurgic University.

While this was going on, another body of co-workers would be

carrying on with religious zeal the World Work that would be
evolved out of, and be coincident with, psychurgy. The best pupils
would be selected as superintendents of new departments, and the
institution would be gradually extended. It would be directed by
the growing body of psychotaxically classified
[page 482]
knowledge and ever-improving methods of the art of mind-using;
that is, Consciousness and truth, according to their nature and
processes, would guide this association of mentators. Being
organized around inductively ascertained knowledge, it would
remain congruous with all future discoveries. “Such a movement
may not at once answer all the anxious questions propounded by
hope and fear—it may indeed never answer some; but so far as the
race is able to ascertain knowledge inductively will it be guided by
a wisdom higher than theory and belief.”
By the method of alethics, psychurgists would be trained to
make a fundamental re-observation of the data of the sciences and
revalidate them, more completely eliminating theories and
hypotheses. They would also eliminate other kinds of errors
(delusions and illusions) even more fundamental than have hitherto
been known to scientific method. Thus would come a new and
more accurate psychotaxis of the sciences—an alethotaxis.
A select body of trained mentators engaged in collecting,
verifying, teaching, and applying theory-free knowledge, working
unselfishly for the good of the world, devoid of local patriotism
and free from religious and philosophical prejudices, might slowly
but surely put the dominant minds and institutions and humanity
under the directive control of the Totality of Demonstrated
Knowledge, Evaluated Esthesias, and Tested Urgation, and thus
bring about the beginning of the reign of Cognocracy and avoid the
Great Danger. The real world-danger as Elmer Gates saw it, was
the rule of pseudognosis (false knowledge): the age-long slavery of
the human mind to theory and error, enthroned tradition and
sanctified superstition, legalized injustice and believed falsehood.
The institution would aim to uplift society gradually by the
slow but sure process of improved educational methods as well as
by reorganization of curriculum-content. The real university of the
twentieth century must necessarily arise out of something
[page 483]
that embodies all the good of the old and something that is
distinctive of the new, and must not be simply a modernization of
medieval, conventional, and academic methods. It must be based
on the fundamental conceptions and tendencies of the New Time.

The psychurgic department would ultimately organize all of

industry, having especially in view the work of bringing to each
individual in each vocation, according to ability, that part of the
sciences and arts that could most help in making a livelihood.
Industry, heurotechnically considered, is a functional part of the
general progress of the mind in science, art, morality and ethics,
and development of the social whole. The industries are important
modes of self-expression. Psychurgy proposed to use the whole
world as a tool for vocational livelihoods as the units of industries.
It would set to the task of running the business of the world the
whole body of validated science administered by a group of the
world’s ablest and specially selected and trained minds; and one
factor would be the psychotaxic organization of vocations and
industries by heurotechnical methods. Business would become
something more than moneymaking or livelihood. It would
become the most potent active force in science, art, and social
progress. Industry and education would cooperate functionally,
and in that world-wide functioning, scientific method would, by
organizing all vocations, constitute the world government.
A great opportunity exists to harness the physical and chemical
forces and make them do work; but a far greater opportunity lies in
harnessing Mind and Consciousness and making MIND do work.
Not merely this or that person’s mind, but the Mind to which
evolution gives rise, allowing evolution to express itself more fully
than through one mind by using a few thousand best minds,
representing every type of ability, and bringing to bear upon each
and every problem all validated scientific knowledge. In
harnessing electricity it is not this particular magnet or coil or
dynamo or motor that is being utilized. but electricity; and
[page 484]
according to its nature and mode of activity we devise ever better
dynamos and motors. In harnessing MIND it is not primarily the
mind of that particular Newton or Faraday that is being utilized,
but that great biological agency called MIND; and according to its
nature and modes of activity of the immanent CONSCIOUSNESS
we devise ever better Newtons and Faradays by brain-building and
mind-embodiment.
The first dynamos very imperfectly utilized the properties
(abilities) of electricity; likewise the brains now in the world are
very imperfectly utilizing the abilities (properties) of
Consciousness. By adapting psychurgy to each individual
(auturgy), we will enable him to utilize Mind and Consciousness
more fully; while by adapting it to group activities (sociurgy), a
more effective utilization is possible than by chaotic groups of
unorganized individuals. By auturgy one motor is put to work, as

it were; by sociurgy a group of motors is put to work on one line of

industry, using motors of various kinds and sizes specially built for
the specific service. Now, if a specific type is planned for each
industrial line, we will be organizing all industries with reference
to all available kinds of motors best adapted to each. If we apply
this analogy to the available types of brains in the world,
classifying and training and organizing the industries of the world
with reference to the available types of minds adapted to each line,
we will be taxifunctionally organizing the work of the world to get
it done by those minds that are best adapted. This will be applying
psychurgy to the world as a unit (World Work).
“Heurotechny is on the highway to culminating discoveries of
transcending importance, for research will be carried on not merely
by man or woman but by the Mind factor of the cosmos! Mind
freed from trammels and directed by scientific method will lead to
more promise than ever haunted the visions of poets and seers; not
only will other planets become part of the home of humanity, but a
whole new inner world will come into view and a Great Discovery
will be made, relating to Consciousness, and it will transcend all
other discoveries of man. It will be the true
[page 485]
Reality that has been aimed at unwittingly by all of man’s beliefs
in mysticism, magic, prayer, faith, God, and the supernatural
generally: that which is immanent in and regnant over the Life-
Process of the Cosmos!” So, optimistically, wrote Elmer Gates.
Neither his own success in this art nor the very flattering
opinions expressed by hundreds of testimonials of competent and
distinguished people could give the final proof of all this, he
continued. Final proof and utilization depended on doing
psychurgy upon the basis and scale demanded by its demonstrated
principles, embodied in the proposed institution. All these steps
needed to be repeated by competent investigators. Human
testimony alone could not establish a scientific datum. Among
other things it required, for example, was the ascertainment of its
congruity with the organic whole of that science and all sciences.
This congruity should be incapable of refutation by specialists.
Time should not be given to other methods of validation until this
had been done.
It would be through such an institution and the psychurgists it
would train that the pressing world-problems would be solved—if
ever—by scientific method. In the proposed Nine Volumes,
Volume 1, the last section, “Scientific Method for World
Problems,” Gates outlined some of these problems. Briefly, his
main points were: how to get rid of war and find a better way to
settle differences—an urgent and imminent problem; and how to

prevent and cure the misunderstandings and hatreds that diverted

so much valuable energy into wrong and useless channels—a
problem that concerned all.
“How can a great psychurgic institution of the sciences and
arts, filled with the treasures of The True and The Beautiful and
The Useful,” he wrote, “equipped for original research along every
line, engaged in the higher training of teachers, with its archives
containing the sum of knowledge (not as a library of millions of
volumes consisting mainly of useless repetitions and obsolete stuff,
but as a psychotaxic epitome of the sciences and arts without
repetition and the untrue and kept up
[page 486]
to date)—how can such an institution risk itself in a country where
international wars or intranational riots may at any time destroy
it?”
Then there is the urgent world-problem of economics,
especially its basic one of making a living. The world’s
inhabitants feel its dead weight more heavily than any other
problem. Unless people can be shown that any kind of united
effort will greatly reduce the enormous cost of living, the basic
disease of the body politic, they will not become effectively
interested. Cheaper living is not a political or governmental
question: the basic question is cheaper production and distribution.
Political methods do not lower the time and labor required; this
cannot be achieved by passing laws, but only by finding out how to
do this by invention and discovery. Can the majority be induced to
make good use of abundant leisure and freedom from the economic
lash? The verdict of psychurgy is that mankind needs more leisure
for work of other kinds, for solving world problems of other kinds,
and will eagerly undertake this supereconomic work. The goal of
psychurgic economics is that to which leisure will lead if
psychurgically directed. The real victory for which the unsatisfied
world is waiting is that of the many and the few as cooperators
over nature. The mind can be led to do better work, and the
removal of the economic yoke will help. The earth is at our
disposal, and Mind is its greatest natural resource.
Next is the personal problem, which is part of the economic
one: What shall I do with myself? Then logically comes the
educational problem, which transcends all others. The right
channel for propagandization is through the schools, not for
theories or beliefs or parties but only for the sciences and the arts.
The economic industrial system of livelihood-making will not be
divorced from the school system. From infancy to adolescence the
chief factor in education is imitation of what others are doing, and
the example should be worth imitating. How can a pupil

completely and accurately learn the actual knowledge of all the

sciences of the Six Groups in the usual time?
[page 487]
Can he learn the elements of all the sciences and arts, fine and
technical, that are the basis of his livelihood? Gates thought so
because he had already found in his inventory of total mental
content (Chapter 6) that all remembered items in the minds of a
number of better-than-average persons of high-school age and
training far exceeded in number of mental data (10-20 times) the
total of all data of all the sciences.
The pupil will learn all the sensations, images, concepts, ideas,
thoughts, and other data of all the sciences so far as a complete
understanding is concerned. He will not, for example, have to
learn all the names and properties of all the chemicals in Beilstein
to know all the principles and laws and methods of chemistry. It is
not the problem of illiteracy we are concerned with—which is
secondary; but the matter of giving all those parts of the sciences
and arts to each student to equip him to make a good livelihood in
work for which he is best fitted.
Most students are studying subjects in which they have not the
slightest predilective interest, with textbooks and methods that are
as “chaotically distaxic as a shelf of bric-a-brac after an
earthquake.” They (and their teachers) have had no training in the
art of learning. Most students are attempting subjects beyond their
ability and are expected to study the fifth intellective step before
mastering the fourth or even the third. Apart from learning the
three R’s, those who derive benefit from the present educational
system are the ones who in most cases could get along better
without it, and are the only ones who could profit by the right kind
of higher education. All the rest should have psychotaxically
selected vocational training according to their levels. The
destruction of interest in knowledge by teaching what is not
knowledge, by loading the mind with the 95 percent content that is
not true by wrong methods of teaching, by trying to understand the
whole of the Cosmos from a study of a part, and by divorcing the
curriculum from vocation, are a few of the more conspicuous
criticisms of our educational system.
But the world’s educational problem is larger, for it should
[page 488]
be researchized—and more so for the higher the level. It is from
this standpoint that the problems of growth, improvement, and
constant re-adaptation to new and changing conditions must be
met.

Education is the basic world problem: scientific method must

be so embodied in a person’s life that he lives it in his personal and
public affairs. Gates stressed, “Unless the multitudes are educated
in this sense, they will not be prepared properly to understand or
cooperate in the steps for solving the other problems. The urgent
nature is that grave and ominous danger lies ambushed in the
world’s present defective and narrow educational system, whereby
fully 95 percent of the mental content in over 98 percent of the
students consists of the untrue or the unproved. It is no
exaggeration to say that of the rememberable content (or what was
once rememberable) in the minds of those who do the labor of the
world and are the majority—and even of those who are ordinarily
considered educated—less than 5 percent consists of validated
knowledge! Can the world’s fate be really safe in their hands if
once they rule? They surely have the power. Less than 1 percent
have efficiency and proficiency in applying that 5 percent of their
mental content, and fewer still have any effective moral or ethical
conscience about living up to the actual knowledge that is the only
guidance in practical affairs. The brains of the many are clogged
and clouded with the Useless and the Untrue, without appreciation
of the nature and value of even those ordinary scientific methods
by which knowledge is, with considerable success, rescued from
out of that welter of bosh and bunk that still shapes most of the
beliefs and public actions of mankind. What can we expect from
minds that are filled mostly with falsehoods believed to be true? Is
this not a most terrible indictment of our modern men and women?
It is; and it is terribly true. It is one of the very greatest dangers to
the human race, crouched tiger-like in the hearts and brains of
humanity, ready to spring.
“For this World’s Greatest Danger, what is the remedy?
[page 489]
Psychurgy says authoritatively, Put more knowledge into each of
those billions of brains and more technical skill into the hands and
more warmth into the hearts; give the minds a little insight into
scientific method of ascertaining the true, and the result will be
billions of wiser and better units in that majority. Then, without
attacking any beliefs, their own judgments will condemn the
unproved and their acts will be saner and safer. It is astonishing
how little knowledge will leaven the whole lump. But the knower
of these facts must see them in the light of scientific method and
know them as classific groups on the authority of his own
consciousness; he must have acquired confidence in them by using
them in research or in practical affairs.”
In the problem of abnormalities, one not usually included was
emphasized: that of preventing the propagation of the unfit. It is

one in which the whole world must cooperate. The begetting of

children by those who have hereditarily transmissible
abnormalities is an evil far greater than all wars, famines, and
epidemics put together, because this obstructs progress more
effectively than any other thing (except perhaps diseases of
cognition); yet to a scientifically ready world it could be stopped in
a few generations. The leveling process of non-selective
propagation will fully discount any and all methods of progress
that man can attempt. The solution to this problem will be the
biggest possible step toward solution of all others.
The problem of the cure and prevention of diseases of
cognition (false knowledge and false methods of trying to discover
and validate) is fundamentally of greater importance than any other
abnormality. Progress everywhere is being thwarted by these
diseases. The mind that harbors false knowledge (pseudognosis) is
basically out of adjustment with its environment, and its adaptive
(self-protective and life-promoting) guidance is misleading—that
is disease, that is an abnormality. It is the most dangerous:
misleading generations, worse than epidemics—for there is no
letup.
It is not for you or me to outline what is to be done in
[page 490]
these problems. It is for scientific method to apply the art of
research; when the growing knowledge shall have persuaded the
world, then work can be commenced.
The World’s Greatest Danger now threatening progress and
happiness is that some mere -ism or belief or -ocracy may usurp
humanity before scientific method gets properly into the minds of
the multitudes, thereby permitting some delusion or belief to waste
a few more thousand years. The world is filled with antagonistic
interests and beliefs and classes that are getting ready to grapple in
a life-and-death struggle. There may be a respite of a few years or
decades, but the struggles are merely awaiting opportunity to
organize themselves. They are intranational and cannot be solved
by forming societies or movements and getting people to join
them.
The Scientific Tao Found at Last. Occasionally during recent
centuries a scientist has been given a chance to apply his special
knowledge and skill to some phase of a situation, and generally
with splendid results. Scientific method itself, which is far greater
than any or all scientists and the science of any decade, has not yet
been given full sway. Of the people of the world, 99 percent know
nothing about scientific method, and only a few scientists know
what the old kind really is. This is not surprising, because there
has been little to know, despite hundreds of philosophical

discussions about it. But clearly and unmistakably there is only

one way that conforms to the spirit of our modem age that has any
chance of success. That way is the one that led humanity to
discover the sciences and create the arts that are the greatest
achievements of the human mind. They represent the world’s
greatest success-and what led to them must be truly great indeed.
It must be greater even than the sciences to which it led! It must
truly be The Way-the scientific TAO.
Scientific Method Is the Harnessing of Mind. Mind is not
something apart from nature: it is integral with it, and one of the
natural forces and resources of this planet. The psychurgic method
has harnessed and put it to work. Only by a training in scientific
method can man learn to base his beliefs on validated
[page 491]
knowledge. Ordinary beliefs are deeply imbedded in the
subconscious (Freud’s unconscious), in temperament, in
prejudices, in fears and hopes; hence these personal-belief
problems cannot be solved by argument, precept, persecution, or
arbitrary authority. Like the kindred problem of ignorance, they
can be rectified only by an education that grounds the mind and
character upon knowledge and scientific method. No other way
has “made good” in the whole history of the world. The modern
technical world exists because something other than belief has
succeeded. The basic morality consists in having the courage and
honesty not to pretend to know unless we really do scientifically
know, to have the patience to remain in ignorance until science
finds out, and the honesty not to accept some speculative or
traditional substitute.
The World’s Greatest Opportunity. If the world does not look
mainly to scientific method, especially to an ever-improving one,
for guidance in its affairs, it will continue to make and remake,
over and over, the hideous and awful mistakes of the past. Wars
and diseases and hatreds and poverty and ignorance will continue
to engulf most of mankind, and obstruct progress and the greater
happiness that could be the splendid inheritance of every citizen of
the earth.
A new mental world would arise in humanity—a mental world
from which the Unproved would disappear (not all at once, and by
some other steps); one that would have placed itself under the
guidance of the Proved. Then scientific knowledge, guided by
scientific method, will rule! This is a basic reformation; its
message is a revelation that goes to the very roots of all world
problems; it is a revolution that makes the mental world revolve
around its true center. It is a very, very radical reformation based

on a continuous revelation made by an ever-improving scientific

method.
This is the way Elmer Gates wrote about these problems. Even
more timely today is his conclusion that placing a theory-free
science and an art of mind-using at the head of human affairs is the
world’s greatest opportunity!
[page 492: blank]

[page 493]
CHAPTER 23
The Third Message:
The Teachers and Pupils Association
The whole history of speculation, belief, and science, and the

whole of psychology and psychurgy abundantly and conclusively
prove that the personally known and discovered fact, law, or
principle, even when not a vagary, always undergoes profound
modifications in becoming part of the organic body of scientific
knowledge. To teach what you believe you know, without having it
scientifically validated, is neither kind, just, nor right.
—ELMER GATES
The psychurgic work carried on in the Psychurgic Institution,

according to Elmer Gates’ plan, would be the main line of World
Work, and it would consist in the high technical development of all
branches of psychurgy and cognostology and of all other sciences
and arts, and of philosophy and natural religion. The T & P
(Teachers and Pupils) Association would carry on this work,
organize it paideutically, and endeavor to perpetuate it. Being the
highest order of World Work that could be done by
[page 494]
man at his present stage of mental development, it must be done by
the very highest order of minds obtainable.
The T & P Association would be a non-public, but not secret,
organization and work, keeping confidential only those things that
were not ready to be propagandized or commercialized. It would
aim at keeping the entire psychotaxis in accessible form and up to
date by means of such facilities as the Laboratory-Museum. It was
essential, Gates wrote, that the paideutic World Work be carried on
by a select and highly trained corps of psychurgists, who would not
contact the outer world—this would be done by Teachers. The
Teachers would organize the propagandization of psychurgy in
assimilable form through the educational movement and the
university.
Paideutics is the general name Gates gave to the two
psychurgic arts of self-instruction and teaching combined into one
simultaneous method of acquiring and imparting knowledges,
feelings, and skills. It is also a special method for mutual selection
of teacher and pupil, a sort of discipleship, the pupil being selected
by propaedeutic analysis. When a teacher can apply psychurgic
mentation to a pupil who is a genius, he is lifted up the scale of
greatness and becomes a Teacher (capital T) in psychurgic

terminology. Similarly, when a pupil can thus learn and apply

what is taught by a psychurgic Teacher of genius, he is lifted and
exalted in his studentship and becomes a Pupil (capital P). This
kind of teaching requires a psychotaxis of validated knowledge, the
Laboratory-Museum, and other such facilities of the Psychurgic
Institution.
Between Teacher and Pupil there will be high honor and
comradeship, sincerity and honesty, and freedom from disguise
and deception. Their relationship will be on the highest plane of
friendship and helpfulness. Without interfering with each other’s
freedom, they will cooperate in thought and research; and having a
common psychologic and cognostic experience and vocabulary—
at times even sharing dominancies of the same kinds and
subjects—they will be able to work synmentically.
The organization will grow by propaedeutically selecting
[page 495]
from each race and every vocation those persons of high health and
good character who have those abilities and genius-capacities
needed. They will be taught, organized psychotaxically into an
individualistic and cooperative research-machine and a Teachers
College, which will be the T & P Association. Selected geniuses
representing every type of human ability and capacity,
paideutically organized, will carry on individual and cooperative
mentation and apply results according to the law of Directed
Human Progress. Gates restated this law: there is a psychotaxic
order of development of scientific knowledge, and this is also the
psychotaxic order of mind unfoldment and development and also
the order of development of the esthesias and of sociurgic
development; therefore, as fast as the normal heurotechnical
development of the sciences takes place, the new knowledge is to
be applied to the amelioration of human conditions and to the
satisfaction of normal esthesias, without trying to foist upon the
public any political or other theory.
The central meaning of World Work from the psychurgic
standpoint is a paideutic and psychotaxic method of organizing the
world’s geniuses into a cooperative and synmentic taxifunctioning
for doing the world’s work—each doing his specialty individually
and at the same time taking his place in the World Machine. It is
as if the earth were a living organism and each person a cell in its
brain cortex, as if the whole of humanity were acting as an earth-
mind, as a mentative whole with many psychotaxic subdivisions.
Mentation covers all intentional or purposive or volitional
activity; and as it all happened here, the purposive effort going on
in the world is a world-mentation. All so-called physical labor is
mental labor: even the instinctive and habitual actions are mentally

directed labor. All sciences and arts and all institutions are
products of mentation. For these and other reasons World Work is
world-mentation. Thus the art of mind-using is the basic technique
of World Work, and geniuses are the most important factors, with
heurotechny and alethics absolutely necessary.
In a very profound sense it may be said that mentation in
[page 496]
its most fundamental form, like cognosis, seems to be the directive
factor in the Cosmic Process. “What other interpretation can be
given that discovery of mine?” said Gates. “It seems basic in
psychology and physics and philosophy that Consciousness can
direct the motion of matter (and without altering the law of
conservation of the energy of motions). The introspective
experiments prove conclusively that a state can be psychally
initiated and can change cells physicochemicaly and change
psychal wholes. An integration of introspects of kinds formerly
unknown and not objectively derived are remembered and
enregistered, and these are the children of the consciousness factor
of psychophysical complexes. If consciously discriminated color
differences are accompanied by a related conation, the
experiencing of them augments the complexities in the internal
structures of the brain, and as these enregistrations are necessary
for remembering, they are that much more mental content (mind)
and brain; therefore, consciousness is a biological factor.”
By genius Gates meant a normal and high development of
some one or two particular kinds of mental ability by which a
person’s mind rises far above the average in that line of
knowledge, feeling, and skill; in which he can do original work,
make discoveries and inventions, and do creative work. It is a
mental dominancy on some branch of science, art, philosophy, or
religion by which he excels, that remains uppermost in his
attention and affection and skill, in which he is eloquent and poetic
and exalted, in which he has new inlooks and outlooks and
insights, concerning which he is his own adviser and teacher and
about which he depends wholly upon his own judgments, and so
on.
The paideutic organization of geniuses for the application of
alethified heurotechny is the keynote of the coming cycle, Gates
pronounced.
The T & P Association will undertake to find the proper place
for each genius in the world—and where he is most needed and
appreciated. This will ensure that person’s greatest happiness, for
doing something worthwhile is the only basis on which

[page 497]
to build any happiness. This principle slowly carried to the lower
levels and into all kinds of vocations is the psychurgic method of
bringing about ownership and government of the world by the
people. (It is not only scientific but psychurgic “socialism,”
divested of partial insights and one-sided methods and hotheaded
tactics.) Each person will find his place in a line of work governed
by its main minds, which in turn will be governed by the whole
sum of the world’s validated knowledge. It will be an
“epistemarchy,” and so far as the body of science is true, an
“alethiocracy.” “In this way the not yet fully awakened and
drowsy and phylogenetically burdened social animal will begin to
move volitionally toward knowledge-directed acts. This great surf-
stranded and stormwrecked jellyfish of the Social Whole will not,
as heretofore, merely wiggle and jerk with frantic and purposeless
spasms but will begin to strive for evaluated and tested goals far
ahead”—so Gates colorfully wrote in 1921 in his manuscript of
Volume IV, “The Educational Problem.”
Through a carefully worked out plan of proportionally sharing
financial interests in any inventions or other heurids resulting from
paideutic mentation of T & P cooperation, the Pupil will be led to
making a livelihood or income at the earliest possible moment so
that he may have leisure and money for research and be able to
continue his development in creative work. The T & P Association
may also gain income from this source, especially from planned
enterprises carried into commercial development by a suitable
organization.
In this age of mounting clamor for public and government
support of research, it is refreshing to note that this plan is not only
one of self-development but of self-support as well. In no other
way can the investigator retain that absolute freedom of thought
and action that the best scientific and creative work demands.
Even the scientist engaged in researches in pure science may thus
not only maintain his independence and moral integrity but
advance his science and alternate his dominancies.
Another function of the T & P Association will be to guard
[page 498]
the manuscripts from misrepresentation and misinterpretation and
not allow it to be appropriated by pretenders. Psychurgy must be
propagandized according to suitable psychotaxic levels by
paideutic methods, because with the exception of a very few who
have genius-capacities of this kind, the world is not far enough
advanced mentally to understand or apply it. The unprepared will
find psychurgy hard to understand because it is so unlike
customary and naive mental methods. Even those with the

requisite ability will not all at once see the difference between
ordinary and haphazard mental operations and those, for example,
of heurotechny. If a real teacher of the new order were to come
and try to establish the new standards and customs at once, he
would be imprisoned or killed. Only by slow educative
modification will progress be achieved; to act otherwise would
mean martyrdom.
The higher phases of psychurgy can be expounded only to
those who have the ability to practice the new introspection and
cognose, and hence can be propagandized only through the T & P
method. But there is a lower level at which certain very practical
parts of psychurgy can be taught by the Demonstrative Exhibit: the
new method of science-teaching and applications of heurotechny.
Individual psychology is the basis of psychurgy. Ever and always
the principles of general and comparative psychology and
psychurgy must be applied to the given person, who has specific
abilities and limitations, to reduce even the smallest part of
psychurgy to useful practice.
The T & P relationship is not the usual one, but implies a much
closer relation of a peculiar kind. This paideutic relationship was
well described by Gates in his “Genius Letter” to his eldest son as
follows: When a person predilectively desires to know about a
subject for which he has ability or genius-capacity and is thus
drawn to some one of the specialists, eager to be taught by him and
having a justified respect and reverence for him, and when that
specialist selects that religiously earnest seeker after truth as one of
the few whom he feels like teaching, and
[page 499]
if on beginning to teach he finds abundant inspirational stimulus,
the result is a paideutic relationship. It is the highest and most
beneficent of human relationships. The student is studying
something greater than the subject—a person who is a genius along
that line—for if the instructor truly understands his subject and is
inspired in teaching it, and if the student is truly eager to learn that
subject and able to grasp it, the Teacher will surpass his ordinary
revealment of himself and subject. He will open his soul and show
the best and uppermost side of a man along that line where he is a
master and therefore a truly Great Person.
A great Teacher requires an equally great Pupil before he can
teach greatly. If both are sincere, as they must be to be great, and
if both are loyal to what they agree to undertake, the closest
rapport will ensue—closer than possible in any other way.
Thereby they may both get direct and unrestrained access to a
mind, to a person, and incidentally to the minds of a Teacher and a
Pupil. They may become acquainted with one of the greatest of all

observable phenomena: the insights and mental attitudes and habits

and viewpoints of Genius—all of which will constitute the most
important part of an education. In addition to learning a science
the Pupil may learn the ways of the mind of a scientist, his moods
and exaltations and ways of getting at things. The Great Person is
greater than the subject he teaches, and only the great Pupil can
realize that fact and reverently take advantage of it. Only a Great
Teacher can understand that in no other way than through a Great
Pupil can he find his highest self-expression. Recognition of this
law is one of the glories of practical psychurgy.
The paideutic relationship is also the most significant bridge
between this generation and the highest minds of the next
generation. It is the only way that great persons can truly reveal
the highest and best and truest in themselves to each other. It is
not merely the Teacher’s knowledge about his subject but his
knowledge of Life that is being imparted. It is the greatness of the
Life Manifestation as a whole that is being bequeathed; and this
[page 500]
will be one of the most beneficial features of the T & P method.
The T & P Association will not merely accumulate knowledge and
transmit the unpropagandized part to the next generation, but it
will transmit as a living stream, from generation to generation and
from age to age, the personal influence of its Great Persons! Not
only will the torch of enlightenment be passed from hand to hand
into the future without being extinguished but the warmth of
personal affection and paideutic insight, like a flame, will melt its
way through the icy walls of the indifference and ignorance of any
dark ages through which mankind may yet have to pass.
A real Teacher is the highest embodiment of life in his age, and
the only way this personal greatness can be transmitted and
become cumulative is by and through a real Pupil. In order for
there to be a paideutic relationship, the teaching and learning must
be done heurotechnically, and in that case the Pupil is not merely
the disciple of a Great Teacher but of the Human Mind, pursuing
science, philosophy, morals, ethics, and religion along lines of his
predilections, abilities, and genius-capacities. The Teacher is not
merely the apostle of a few Great Pupils but of psychurgy and its T
& P perpetuation. Not only do Pupil and Teacher become
acquainted with that most wondrous of all phenomena, a Person,
but they become leaders in a significant world movement. So
Gates wrote to his son.
Psychurgy recognizes another kind of knowledge and
experience in cognition, and uses it as the basis of its cognitive
paideutics; namely, the attainment of Insights, Uplifts, and Powers
as the three factors in a Plane. These factors represent a more true

experience, a more permanently true knowledge, than any other

kind of cognitive teaching, the insight and not the details being the
achievement of value. The pupil is led through a systematic series
of Insights, each being his own insight, each a unit in a complexus
or processive of insights, causing him to know and feel and do, to
know the same reality that the Teacher knows. Without ordinary
language they come by insightation to
[page 501]
the same experience with the same realities. “Is it not
transcendently wonderful?” exclaimed Gates. “Each insight is a
‘word’ of this impartive ‘language’.” With reference to these
realities, the useful steps in growth and character-building are
Insights and Uplifts, and to achieve these the Teacher must build
on those already found in the mind of the Pupil. The criterion of
results must be measured by Uplifts and Insights, and not by any
other educational method (such as examinations) now in vogue.
These Insights and Uplifts are the real value in writings of every
honest philosopher or religious devotee or esthetic critic.
In the psychurgic sense an Insight includes all the usual
meanings, but very much more. The ontogenctic development of
faculties and feelings will no longer be left to chance but will be
intentionally elicited and directed, systematically developed, and
used paideutically for a fuller fruitage of Level-Insights, Uplift-
Insights, and Power-Insights. By garnering these precious results
of one’s life and keeping them classified and re-functioning them,
a mentative Insightive dominance is achieved. This is new, Gates
observed optimistically; the very idea of it is new, and the method
is still newer.
Insights are the true basis of a higher auturgy, he emphasized in
his studentship writings. Most people live most of their lives under
the drive and lure of what is going on around them without ever
being impelled or adjusted by insight. Only the greater persons
have thus been led, and then haphazardly and without conscious
understanding of the nature and utility of the insight. It is only a
first step in the fundamental paideutic method to follow the
predilection and genius of a Pupil; the second consists in following
the Insights that adjust the Pupil and genius to the larger realities of
life and the world. This Impartive Exposition and Insightive
Auturgy Stage of Studentship is “one of the wonders of the modern
age!”
The Emergence of the Individual. The Pupil will be led
gradually by paideutic mentation to follow the real development of
his genius-capacities and emerge as an individual. It is a slow

[page 502]
process, this emerging as an individual out of that from which and
into which one was born, and it can be done only by a succession
of steps. Only a few of the greatest geniuses ever accomplish it
alone; most of them fail. At the beginning we are each totally
dependent upon our mothers, in the womb; then as infants we are
only a very little less dependent upon them and upon our
surroundings. We learn what childhood has to teach almost wholly
by imitation, which is a form of dependence. We inherit and adopt
manners, language, customs; and only about one-tenth of one
percent of each of us is individualistic. Slowly we acquire the
knowledge and skill of our race and time; and slowly, as our
distinctive genius-capacities begin to come to the front, do we
become emancipated. In the process each one meets difficulties at
every step, for ignorance and error enthrall, and right methods have
to be painfully learned during an apprenticeship—that is, if they
are to be learned early in life and well learned; otherwise the whole
life will be spent in learning them less well.
After such apprenticeship, for which the systematic methods of
the paideutic (T & P) curriculum serve, the Pupil may walk alone
in the mental world, using all the skill he has acquired and all his
knowledge as a “means for a unitary self-expression of his genius-
capacities, not to attain which is death to his highest and most
individualized life. THE PSYCHOLOGIC LAW OF
INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT is that only by cumulatively and
associatively combining EVERY item of the Pupil’s originality in
an exposition, and functioning that exposition as a whole does his
genius finally become FREE, and achieve its meaning in the world.
Those who never thus learn to express themselves in an
EXPOSITION (inventive, scientific, literary, musical, oratorical,
sculptural, pictorial, pugilistic, or what not) remain in thralldom—
they never get entirely out of the environmental womb—THEY
DIE UNBORN!”
The Guide to Genius. The process of self-expression is
extended by initiated steps of paideutic mentation (details of which
have not been given), through a constant inventing and discovering
[page 503]
and creating along originality-lines, and by functioning the whole
ensemble to that end . “The individual no longer follows or obeys.
He creates and dominates; it is even his own person and periperson
that he creates and dominates!
“To the pioneer there are no precedents, no established customs
that are helpful, no sentiment in his favor. He must mark out his
own path and follow it despite obstacles, for that is the price of
genius. Genius is vicarious; through the genius-capacities of a

person, world-progress takes a step. The new powers are not for
the genius alone; they are the symptoms of a world in parturition.
“What guide shall a genius have but his own powers of
discovering, inventing, creating, foreknowing?
“None!
“Therefore it is to the art of heurotechny that he must look for
help, and to that alone.”
The Path of Heurotechny. If the Pupil accomplishes its
successive stages, he may apply all of heurotechny to the art of
inventing. First he will apply it to livelihood and business in order
to bring as early in life as possible all his genius-capacities and
other abilities to getting a regular income for supporting his work,
selectively utilizing his real capacities and best opportunities.
Then he may apply heurotechny to discovering new ideas, facts,
things, laws, principles, and insights for his mind-growth and for
science. The Pupil may next look to a career to fulfill his
predilections or satisfy his ambitions, applying heurotechny to his
esthesias to be sure he is right and to get acquainted with them, to
render them normal and extensive and intensive, thus increasing
life’s anabolism and joy for more effective effort. He may then
direct his powers to creative work, giving constructive unity and
purposive meaning to his previously Achieved Results, combining
them into a higher order for realizing his goals and giving
expression to his genius-capacities along some main line of effort.
A synthesis of his inventions and discoveries, his knowledge and
feeling,
[page 504]
his opportunities and prospections, must be a creative work
accomplishing his purposes.
Progress in heurotechny will produce growth of interest in
science. In applying heurotechny to livelihood and business the
Pupil will get more deeply into science and feel the need of it, not
only as an intellective understanding or introspective inlook or
esthesic appreciation but also as an impulsion—so that he
predilectively will take up heurotechny for his scientific and sophic
interests. Out of business and invention he will have become more
of a scientist.
With the growth and experience that will come from such a
heuric life, the Pupil at the plenitude of his capacities, just as his
efficiency begins to diminish, will turn over to his associates his
Achieved Results, giving them full view of his opportunities and
inventional prospections, his scientific prognoses, philosophic
insights, and creative impulsions. Then he will retreat from active
administration of his affairs to rest and grow as the “estuary of his
life widens into the sea.”

Gates continued his summary:

“Heurotechny specifically is the modus operandi by which
genius adjusts itself to the world while carrying out a new line of
thought or action.
“The psychurgic life is fundamentally heuristic in its urgation.
The main characteristic of the psychurgist is this: that at all times
and forever and with reference to any and every affair that calls for
his judgment and action, he brings his whole mental content and
effort heuristically to bear on it. If this mode of life becomes
popular it will transform the human race. Then science and
sophics will displace superstition, mysticism, war, disease,
insincerity, and unkindness.”

Epilogue
[page 505]
Epilogue
The World-Teachers
There are many ways to close this account—and there are no

ways. Some parts will remain in the mind of the reader for
reconsideration and will start new mental growths, new
beginnings. The essay be Elmer Gates on world-teachers will
perhaps place psychurgy in historical perspective to give added
meaning.
[page 506: blank]

[page 507]
THE WORLD-TEACHERS
by ELMER GATES
Preface
For a thousand or more generations humanity has been

traveling through the seemingly interminable jungles and deserts of
savagery and barbarism toward a civilization which seems, at
length, to be approaching. Sometimes the path of its pilgrimage
has been a labyrinth without a clue to the way out, and sometimes
the path has led almost straight backward. For a few recent
centuries Man has been climbing the plateau of a new world-
conception, that of Modern Science; he has been following a trail
that does not return upon itself, nor does it lead backward. It is no
longer a trail but a highway of scientific method. And still more
recently it has been found that the great mountain ranges on this
high and wide plateau converge into the still higher Levels and
Uplifts of Psychurgy, with newer methods and ideals. From this
new and truer point of view we may now more understandingly
look backward over the long course of human history and see
outlined, as if on a map, the few splendid routes which have
actually led us in the right direction, and also, as if in red ink, the
many routes which have led to failure and disaster. By thus more
validly estimating the right and wrong in the teachings of the Past
we may discover who were really the great World-Teachers, and
sift from out of much verbiage and error those great Insights which
are the priceless heritage and which will continue to lead us, in
tested directions, toward the still greater opportunities of the now
dawning cycle of Enlightenment.

Epilogue
[page 508]
Introduction
Now and then, once or twice each thousand years, and a few
times for each race, great World-Teachers make their appearance.
By their initiative they shape the main course of human history.
These World-Teachers are of two kinds: either they sum up the
well-known teachings and tendencies of their time and merge them
into an institutional movement, or they give utterance to Insights
that are just dawning but not yet perceived by others, inaugurating
an epoch, an era, or a cycle, as the case may be. At the time of
these pioneers there are in that country or nation no others on the
same Level or Uplift.
A Great Mind is a World-Teacher if its teachings inaugurate an
epoch, an era, or a cycle, and if its teachings are beneficent. A
World-Teacher is the beginning of a New Time, a Mediator
through whom the Cosmically-immanent and transcendent
CONSCIOUSNESS makes a further Revelation Of BEING; that is,
of Self and the Cosmos. It has taken a long cycle of eras to effect a
cognitive Revelation of the Self and The Cosmos to humanity,
each successive Revelation through a World-Teacher having
opened new and virgin mental territories for settlement and
development. Hitherto the Conscious Process has spoken
cognitively—all languages and all world conceptions are cognitive.
It has entered into the minds of World-Teachers by successive
Levels and Uplifts; it has organized by Deeds enacted by World-
Teachers; it has been cognitively revealing humanity to itself,
thereby preparing for a still greater Revelation other than
cognitive. Concealed within the cognitively known Cosmos is
another and greater REALITY the disclosure of which is the first
glimpses that Psychurgy is giving us of a New Cycle.
These world Insights are the actual steps by which
Consciousness per se has started all the world epochs and eras and
cycles; they are the peep-holes in the mechanico-biotic Cosmos
through which man has cognitively seen and understood himself as
a Self in a Cosmos. It is by steps taken by the World-Teachers
[page 509]
that Consciousness has been cognitively organizing the Biotic
System of this earth.
The Insights of the World-Teachers should be understood from
the standpoint of the Great Minds who first achieved them—as
they first understood them, and not as they, or their commentators,
afterwards distorted them by clumsy attempts to “reconcile” them
with, or interpret them by, the beliefs and conventions of that time.
All the great cognitive Insights that have come through the World-

Epilogue
Teachers of the past should be well known and felt by each

psychurgic Pupil. The Realities to which they relate are gateways
across the path of progress that remain closed to those who do not
grasp the conceptions which underlie them. Each Pupil should
unlock all these gateways, so that on the highway of evolution he
may be in the front rank—with the pioneer—ready to blaze new
trails.
A Great Mind is a mode of mentation by which the Cosmic
Process has achieved a new beginning on earth, and the Great
Insights and Uplifts of Great Minds are the best functional
response that humanity makes to its trends and tendencies. Great
Minds are the living springs that give birth to the rills that water
the wide averages of humanity. Great Minds are the peaks of the
mountain ranges that are the continental backbone of the world;
they are the climaxes in the great drama of human history—their
sayings are the main lines of its text. To appreciate that the Great
Minds are World-Teachers and that they but give expression to
Consciousness working in and through them, is to give to these
minds a deeply religious meaning. Each World-Teacher is a flash
of illumination from The Highest, each a world-guiding Insight.
“Take care,” says Victor Hugo, “you who are tracing those
circles round the poet, you put him beyond man. That the poet
should be beyond humanity in one way—by the wings, by the
immense flight, by the sudden possible disappearance into the
fathomless—is well; it must be so, but on condition of his
reappearance. He may depart, but he must return. Let him have
wings for the infinite, provided he has feet for the earth, and
[page 510]
that, after having been seen flying, he is seen walking.... Let the
star which is in that eye weep a tear, and that tear be a human tear.
Show me thy foot, Genius, and let me see if, like myself, thou hast
earthly dust on thy heel. . . . Genius is he who consecrates himself!
Even when overcome he remains serene, and his misery is
happiness. No, it is not a bad thing for a poet to meet face to face
with duty. Duty has a stern resemblance to the ideal. The act of
doing one’s duty is worth all the trial it costs. . . . Truth, honesty,
teaching the crowds, human liberty, manly virtue, conscience, are
not things to disdain. To level the tyrant and the slave, what a
magnificent effort! Now, the whole of one side of actual society is
tyrant, and all the other side is slave. To straighten this out will be
a wonderful thing to accomplish; yet it will be done. All thinkers
must work with that end in view. They will gain greatness in that
work. To be the SERVANTS of God in the march of progress and
the APOSTLE Of God with the people—such is the law which
regulates the growth of genius.”

Epilogue
Four great lines of World-Teachers have shaped the course of

human progress. There has been the philosophico-religious
(sophic) line, with its Insights and Uplifts, founding philosophies
and religions; the scientific line, with its discoveries and
inventions, its Teachers on the Heights inaugurating sciences and
arts; the esthesic line, with its apostles of true feeling establishing
the Fine Arts; and the social line, with its men of affairs, founding
institutions.
In the sophic line the first of the great World-Teachers who
were servants of The [Cosmic] Process in the march of progress,
and apostles of The Purpose [the nature of Consciousness] with the
people, were Confucius (Kung Fu-tse) and Socrates.
Confucius and Socrates
KUNG FU-TSE (“The Teacher Kung”) was born 551 B.C. of

poor parents. He spent the greater part of his long life journeying
from one end of China to the other, endeavoring to reform the
wrongs of his time. He constantly gave instruction to disciples.
[page 511]
He was a teacher by taste and training, incomparably the greatest
of his time—the first great World-Teacher of which we have any
authentic record, the first teacher who was not led by mere
“authority” and tradition. He never ceased even for a day in
prosecuting his studies. He taught mainly the principles of natural
morals and equitable politics. He was naïf, honest, and afraid of
speculation and tradition. His morals were not founded on books
and beliefs, his politics was not founded on the rights of kings. His
neighbors instinctively brought their disagreements before him for
settlement. He laid the foundation of the ethics of the Chinese and
of their system of Government—but, quite naturally, his teachings
have been much distorted by the lower-level minds through whom
they have been interpreted and applied. His devotion to his mother
set a beneficent example of filial duty that left its indelible mark on
China and the whole Orient—a hundred million mothers, each
generation since, have been happier because of the example of his
loving service. Out of this wholly naturistic teaching, through
interpretations which Confucius did not sanction, and through a
belief in a natural kind of unsuitability which he did not sanction,
arose the ancestor worship of the Chinese.
Although his teachings did not call for it, innumerable temples
to Confucius covered China and he was worshipped. His nine
books were the sacred books of the Chinese. He inculcates the
entire submission of children to parents; and as his followers have

Epilogue
interpreted this teaching, a ruler stands in relation of father to his

subjects, and hence, emperors revere Confucius. His mind gave
birth to the Golden Rule “of doing by others as would ourselves be
done by.” He believed that the human body is composed of two
principles, one of which disintegrates at death, and the other, the
spiritual part of the good man, continues and may revisit the earth.
He did not believe in a Deity with a personal form; he taught that
out of nothing cannot possibly be produced anything; that matter
must have existed from all eternity and the cause of things must
have coexisted eternally with the things themselves; and therefore
(not because some bible said it), the
[page 512]
CAUSE is eternal, infinite, indestructible, without limits,
omnipotent, omnipresent. Was he a heathen in our derogatory
sense of that term?
The Chinese Classics in which the Confucius system of
thought is found comprise the WU CHING (the Five Classics) and
the SHIH SHU (the Four Books); very much thereof never
emanated from Confucius, but from lower minds who were unable
to understand the contradictions of their comments to the real
conceptions of the teacher Kung. Do you not like the name
teacher better than some of those names which were given to
themselves by certain others who organized religions and
movements?
Away back in the night-time of tradition and myth this teacher
advised his countrymen to follow a path which would have led to
the methods and ideals of science! For instance:
He said, “It is impossible for us to observe the practical rules
of life if there be wanting these three virtues: 1st, WISDOM,
whereby we discern good from evil; 2nd, UNIVERSAL LOVE,
which leads us to love all men and women who are virtuous; 3rd,
DETERMINATION, which makes us constantly persevere in our
adherence to the good and in our aversion to the evil.” (He did not
attempt to say just what constitutes good and evil, but pointed out
that it is by wisdom, love, and perseverance that we discern the
difference, and it is by discerning good from evil that man is to
progress and succeed. He did not say we should love anybody—
but only those who practice the virtues, not hypocritically, but
because they are virtuous. Our duty is constantly to persevere in
our adherence to the good and our aversion to evil: that is his
religion, a non-mythical religion.)
He said, “Lest some fearful persons, not well versed in
morality, should imagine that it is impossible for them to acquire
these three virtues, they should know that there is no person
incapable of acquiring them; that in these matters the impotent

Epilogue
man is voluntarily impotent. However dull and inexperienced a

man may be, if he desire to learn and grow not a-weary in the
study of virtue, he is not very far from wisdom.”
[page 513]
He said, “He who in his studies wholly applies himself to labor
and exercise and neglects meditation thereon, loses time, and he
who applies himself to meditation and neglects experimental
exercise, does only wander and lose himself; the first can never
know anything exactly, his knowledge will always be intermixed
with doubts and obscurities; and the last will only pursue shadows,
his knowledge will never be certain and solid. Labor, but slight
not meditation; meditate, but slight not labor.”
He said, “The great secret to acquire true knowledge is to
cultivate and polish the reason and to get a knowledge of things
rather than words, by unceasing perseverance.” (He could not tell
and did not try to tell what constitutes true knowledge nor how to
cultivate and polish the reason nor how to get a knowledge of
things [realities]— but he knew this to be the highest human need
and that the road to it is unceasing reasoning, love, and
perseverance. It is difficult to write unemotionally about these
teachings, so long ago, so true, pointing out the way, leaving it to
others to find how to travel that path. He was without pretense in
this teaching. I say again, that if his teachings had not been
interpreted on a lower plane and level by his successors, China
would have been the center of the world’s civilization while
Europe was still barbarian. We may from the Level of Confucius
glance over that period and see no other equal Height except
Socrates.)
What had this World-Teacher to say about the sanction for
right-doing, whether it lie within the mind or outside? in
authorities or nature?
He said, “If a man, although full of self-love, endeavor to
perform good actions, behold him already very near that universal
love which urges him to do good to all.” (He must not do good
from fear of punishment or for a promised reward but because of
“that universal love which urges him to do good to all.” He
recognized the non-individualistic, but human and natural,
character of this urging.)
He said, “If a man feel a secret shame when he hears impure
and unchaste discourse, if he cannot forbear blushing thereat,
[page 514]
he is not far from that resolve of spirit which makes him constantly
seek after good and have an aversion to evil.”

Epilogue
He said, “Riches and honors are good, the desire to possess

them is natural to all men; but if these agree not with virtue, the
wise man ought to condemn and generously renounce them. On
the contrary, poverty and ignominy are evils; man naturally avoids
them. If these evils attack the wise man, it is right that he should
rid himself of them, but not by crime.” (Do you feel the greatness
of this? Certain later religions have unwisely called poverty a
blessing. Confucius says that a man naturally avoids poverty and
ignominy—the standard is not a bible or creed or tradition, but
nature. He was the first great Naturalistic Teacher, Whitman the
last.)
He said, “Labor to purify thy thoughts; if thy thoughts are not
ill, neither will thy actions be so.” (This is fundamental and great;
this was long before later imitators.)
What had he to say regarding our duty toward another life? He
taught that the spiritual part of good men could return to earth.
This is about the only instance of “belief” entering into his
teachings.
He said, “Wouldst thou learn to die well? learn first to live
well.
His rules for social life are these:
He said, “Do not unto others what you would not have them do
unto you.”
He said, “Acknowledge thy benefits by the return of other
benefits, but never revenge injuries.”
SOCRATES (470 B.C.) was born while Confucius was still

alive, but there is no evidence that the great Greek had learned
from the great Mongol. Greek philosophy was the child of
Socrates, and this child was ably tutored by Plato and Aristotle.
We might begin with an account of the earlier Greek thinkers,
especially of that school whose teachings were summed up by
EMPEDOCLES (5th century B.C.) who held that the knowledge
[page 515]
which a man has of the world outside himself is possible because
he is composed of the same elements as are found in things, and as
these elements are conscious, each one in man recognizes that
element in things. The Greeks did not think of nature as something
alien from man or lower than man; even the gods were human.
This was the first glimpse of a theory of knowledge
(epistemology), although it had no such purpose in view.
But Greek philosophy, in the true sense, was inaugurated by
Socrates; he offered us the first theory of knowledge that attempted
to be such a theory—the first that contained a method of
knowledge.

Epilogue
Socrates was the greatest teacher of philosophy that has ever

lived and he had the greatest pupils with which a teacher was ever
blessed. His mode of teaching has been immortalized as the
Socratic Method. Like all greatest teachers, he taught mostly by
talking and by personal influence and example. He loved his
pupils: in the first campaign of the Peloponnesian War he saved
the life of his pupil Alcibiades; in the second campaign, at Delium,
he saved the life of his pupil Xenophon. But these were not the
only great persons who were his pupils. When Plato (429 B.C.)
was twenty years old he was enthusiastically studying under
Socrates; and Plato, more than any other philosopher or person,
laid the foundation of the moral and intellectual culture of the past
two thousand years. Aristotle (384 B.C.) when eighteen became a
pupil of Plato. Aristotle’s genius not only embraced all the
sciences of his times but it discovered new sciences, such as logic.
He wrote on physics, metaphysics, rhetoric, ethics, politics, and
natural history. His philosophy was uppermost in Europe for
nearly 2000 years. His was one of the very greatest intellects that
has ever appeared, second only to that of Newton.
Socrates was brave, high-minded, and true to the principles
which he taught. As Senator, he successfully refused to obey the
order of the Thirty Tyrants. The distinction he attained among his
countrymen is well indicated by his being president of the
Prytaneum, or senatehouse at Athens, where the council of the
[page 516]
committee of fifty assembled and where those who had rendered
signal public service were maintained at public expense. This was
the highest honor in Athens. While president of the Prytanes, his
sense of justice led him to oppose their wishes and also to run
counter to a popular clamor. He was the first one to contemplate
the universe from an exclusively moral and ethical point of view.
He exceeded all others in the investigation of philosophical truths.
With reference to the mythical theology of Greece he was an
outspoken infidel—the Voltaire, Volney, Paine, and Ingersoll of
his time. He doubted Hades and the Gods. He was therefore
brought to trial for corrupting the beliefs of the youths of Athens.
When condemned, this moral giant of antiquity voluntarily carried
out the decree of the State by drinking the fatal hemlock. This is
the draught which, in some form or other, the Old ever gives to the
New—if the New too much accentuates its newness. This is part
of what he said in his defense—a defense which had for its purpose
not the saving of his own life but the recognition of truth and right.
He bravely instructed the judges that it was their duty to carry out
the decree of the laws they had sworn to support, but while telling
them this, he also told them quite freely a few other things:

Epilogue
“No man knows what death is, yet men fear it as if they knew
well that it was the greatest of all evils; which is just a case of that
worst of all ignorance, the conceit of pretending to know what you
do not really know. For my part, this is the exact point on which I
differ from most other men—if there be any one thing in which I
am wiser than they. As I know nothing about Hades [he was
accused of doubting it] so I do not pretend to any knowledge; but I
do know well that disobedience to a person better than myself,
either God or man, is both an evil and a shame. Nor will I embrace
an evil which is certain in order to escape an evil which may, for
aught I know, be a good. Perhaps you may feel indignant at the
resolute tone of my defense; you may have expected that I should
do as most others do in less dangerous trials than mine: that I
should weep, beg, and entreat
[page 517]
for my life, and bring forward my children and relatives to do the
same. I have relatives, like other men, and three children; but not
one of them shall appear before you for any such purpose. Not
from any insolent disposition on my part, not any wish to put a
slight upon you, but because I hold such conduct to be degrading
to the reputation which I enjoy; for I have a reputation for
superiority among you, deserved or undeserved as it may be. It is
a disgrace to Athens when her esteemed men lower themselves, as
they do but too often, by such mean and cowardly supplications;
and you, judges, instead of being prompted thereby to spare them,
ought rather to condemn them the more for so dishonoring the city.
Apart from my reputation, I should be a guilty man if I sought to
bias you by supplications. My duty is to instruct and persuade you,
if I can; but you have sworn to follow your convictions in judging
according to the laws, not to make the laws bend to your partiality
and it is your duty so to do.”
The first step in the scientific and systematic use of reason was
discovered by Socrates. If you wish to reason about any subject of
experience whatever, you must clearly define every subject, so you
know just in what way and to what extent it differs from other
subjects, so every word may mean precisely some one definite
thing or group of things; that is, the concept must be clearly
defined. This is the first step in modem science. The aim of
science and philosophy is, admittedly, the establishment of a
system of concepts (universals, laws, groups, taxonomies) of
clearly defined notions about things and their relations. Socrates
did not invent the concept, but was the first to discover its meaning
as the method of the explanation of things, first to call attention to
the concept as the great instrument of science, thereby
inaugurating scientific method, and also a new cycle in philosophy;

Epilogue
and as developed by Plato and Aristotle, this insight has

determined the general course which human thought was to take.
He determined, says Windelband in his Geschichte der
Philosophie, for all the future the essential nature of science. (Of
[page 518]
course, this applies only to cognitive science). The philosophy of
Socrates had in it the spirit as well as the method of modem
science: it no longer relied on the authority of books and priests, it
discarded mysticisms and alleged revelations from sources other
than the human mind, it accepted only naturally determinable facts
as its guide—or, at least, it was its definite purpose—it broke away
from the Old and took up with the New.
These insights of Kung and Socrates control the highest
thought and action throughout the world today; Confucius,
Socrates, Plato, and also but not exclusively Aristotle, are the
masters of those who know. Induction itself is but the scientific
form of the concept. The process of defining a concept is, par
excellence, the method of experimental research. The mutual
relations of concepts and groups of concepts constitute the outlines
of systematic science. In the Socratic conception of the concept
was the beginning of scientific philosophy.
Whether the original insights of Kung and Socrates were
limited and directed away from the greater issues by Plato and
Aristotle is a question I will not now discuss. In assuming the
objectivity of concepts and in treating them as the ground or reality
of things Socrates might have been almost ready to discover their
real meaning, as disclosed by psychurgy; namely, that they are the
Thought-out Truths under Alethity—an insight that could not
come, however, until the advent of cognosis. But his attitude
toward concepts might have been a shorter path to this goal than
the more speculative theories of Plato and Aristotle. Socrates is
known almost solely through the interpretation of his teachings by
these two great pupils. It is deeply regrettable that he did not write
his own account and then teach it to a few pupils (as the
psychurgic World Work is being planned).
PLATO taught that there is a systematically related group of
ideas (concepts) that have their existence independently of the
mind. He defined ideas as universals (generals). These ideas are
immutable, while the things that more or less perfectly exemplify
these ideas are mutable. Plato’s method of knowledge
[page 519]
consisted in the contemplation of these ideas as they are seen by
the soul before it was imprisoned in a body; and that by
purification, the soul may still enjoy the vision and thus get a

Epilogue
foretaste of the future life whose bliss consists in beholding them.

Leaving out the many hypotheses involved, we readily understand
that he believed in a system of ideas. Furthermore he conceived
that one may go on and attain by a kindred power of the soul (that
is, kin to the object of knowledge) a knowledge of the very essence
of things by drawing near and insighting the very being—thereby
living and growing truly. He thinks he sees similarity and perhaps
even identity between subject and object. He declares that the
realities of the universe are rational and therefore knowable to
reason; that the good is the source of knowing and being (evidently
not seeing the contradiction that if this be the case, then the good is
the real being).
ARISTOTLE maintained that in things lies the reality and not
in ideas—this reality of things he called form (not merely shape)
and taught that all things are parts of a supreme thing. He defined
truth as the agreement of thought with reality. See the antithetic
view: Plato made things agree with concepts; Aristotle made
concepts agree with things. Each built a system of philosophy on
his exclusive insight, not suspecting that both insights are true.
Aristotle taught that there are two kinds of cognition, by sense and
by reason, and in both cases knowledge consists of a copy in the
mind which represents the outward thing.
Plato and Aristotle were on the same sophic Level; Socrates
had the greater Uplift, as the psychurgist would suspect, because it
is from the esthesic (or cognesic) side of life that new cycle
insights arise. Aristotle taught, furthermore, that the supreme form
is God, and that God is self-consciousness—but his conception of
it was wholly cognitive.
PLOTINUS (204 A.D.) taught that the absolute Being gives
rise to reason, reaching a first climax in Plato and Aristotle, then
passes upward to perfect unity with the Supreme Being
[page 520]
in ecstasy, in which self-consciousness is obliterated. Psychurgy
sees in the dim glimpse of Plotinus the beginning of a knowledge
of Being which is attainable, not by ecstasy, but by a mode of
knowing that was not then known.
JESUS CHRIST, as represented by the Christian Church
during the Middle Ages, exerted a profound influence on the mind
of those races in whom modem science had its fuller rise.
Notwithstanding the horrors of these Ages, out of them came a
deeper self-consciousness. The nature that surrounded man was
ignored and the whole attention was directed inwardly. When the
Middle Ages were gone man brought to the contemplation of
nature a deeper tendency to introspection, and the problem of body
and mind opened up; Descartes, the Ockhamists, Spinoza, and

Epilogue
Leibnitz considered these questions. Finally there came one who

asked, “What are ideas? Can they be applied to things?” This man
was Locke.
JOHN LOCKE, (1632 A.D.) in his Essay concerning Human
Understanding (1690, three years after Newton’s Principia)
asserted that the human mind does not possess innate ideas, that
ideas and their combinations and associations have their origin in
sensory perception and reflection, that all our knowledge consists
in joining and separating ideas according to their agreement or
disagreement. The defense of this theory of knowledge led him to
ignore a contradictory insight of his, that there is a knowledge in
which our ideas agree with reality.
HUME, (1711) taught that the content of the mind consists of
impressions and ideas (re-presentative impressions). It was his
theory of knowledge that impressions came from unknown causes
(perhaps from objects, God, or the mind itself). All that a doctrine
of knowledge can do is to trace the forms which these ideas and
impressions assume. Having in mind the Platonic system of ideas
he seeks to determine the nature of the relations which constitute a
system, and he concludes, for instance, that the relation of
causality is a mere conjunction in time of our impressions and
ideas.
[page 521]
Kant
Over two thousand years after Confucius and Socrates came

IMMANUEL KANT (Konigsberg, 1724) with the next great step
in this series of highest world-insights. He saw that although there
may be just such objective things-in-themselves as Aristotle’s form
and such a system of ideas independently of the mind as taught by
Plato, they are not known to us directly but only indirectly by
means of the mind, which in the act of knowing adds thereto the
products of its own manufacturing. Things and concepts are not
pictured in the mind as are objects in a mirror—the mind in
mirroring them adds the colorings of the mirror and magnifies or
distorts them according to its irregularities. The mind does not
receive its knowledge of these things and concepts first hand but
manufactures its ideas of them by a mental process which transfers
certain characteristics and limitations of the mind. The mind in
grasping these objective things leaves its impress upon them as the
hand does upon the snow which it moulds into shape. Things do
not act directly on the reason. they affect our senses, and the
resulting sensations are not these things-in-themselves (that have
caused the stimuli) but concepts of them. The concepts are not the
concepts of Socrates or the ideas of Plato, existing independently

Epilogue
of the mind, but are manufactured by the mind and are in the mind.
According to its nature and limitations the mind turns out such
ideas as it is fitted to, bearing the marks of the mental machinery,
and limited in scope to the capacities of the mind. The mind is
itself an important factor in the making and shaping of every
datum of knowledge about objective things or the system of ideas.
This is a great step—it gives rise to a critique of the reason, to
determine its credentials. Kant was chronologically preceded by
Bacon (1561), Descartes (1596), and Newton (1642). Descartes
belongs to the sophic line, Bacon and Newton to the scientific line.
With Hume, Kant regarded impressions as coming from
[page 522]
things which cannot be directly known, because sensations do not
necessarily reveal the objective cause just as it is, and neither do
they reveal the subjective self—they are merely its modes only.
The thing-in-itself is absolutely unknown. Kant regarded concepts
or ideas, “categories” as he called them, as due to the spontaneous
activity of the mind. They do not “represent” the thing-in-itself;
they are not a copy of the external reality, they are merely
subjective, and bring classific order into the chaos of mental
content—making a consistent unity, weaving a web, which we
know as nature yet which is a mere product of the mind. Concepts
or categories or ideas do not give a knowledge of things, and
neither do sensations.
But Kant was also groping his way toward still another theory
of knowledge—he thought there might be an intuitive intelligence,
unlike our “discoursive” intelligence, which could know things in
their truth. While we cannot intellectually reach absolute reality
we can come indirectly in contact with it through our moral
faculties, thereby having made known to us the great moral
principles of the universe. Very nearly did he attain the psychurgic
insight that through esthesis we come in touch with the Level
above our highest intellectual Level!
Kant’s insight gave rise to agnosticism. This agnosticism
which regards everything as a modification of the unknowable,
even as developed by Spencer and others, implies a theory of
knowledge, for in saying that knowledge is impossible, it has an
epistemology.
Out of Kant, however, developed another theory of knowledge
that had a great influence upon philosophy, that of Absolute
Idealism. While Kant regarded categories (the concepts of
Socrates and ideas of Plato) as mere wishes among memories of
sensations, and consequently unable to give us a knowledge of
things, he has at this point another Insight, that judgments arise out
of a recognition of the relation of categories as a priori knowledge,

Epilogue
necessary and universal. Incidentally, this is a theory of the origin

of axioms. Necessary knowledge, according to this
[page 523]
epistemology, does not consist of relations between mind and
objects, but arises through the mind’s activity in cognizing
relations between categories. The great truth of this insight does
not become apparent until there is contrasted with it the psychurgic
insight that out of the inherent nature of Consciousness itself may
arise, expressive and interpretative of that nature, a knowledge of
its nature constituting still another kind of knowledge.
HEGEL (1770) does not believe that truth is all agreement
between cognition and reality, but concludes that the Idea in fully
realizing itself is truth. When an idea develops all its
presuppositions and implications it realizes itself.
T. H. GREEN (1863) concludes that knowledge is a
consciousness of the relations of facts because an eternal
intelligence has communicated to us “in inseparable correlation—
understanding and the facts understood, experience and the
experienced world.”
WALTER SMITH (1899) in attempting to determine how one
individual has a knowledge of another, how one individual
consciousness is to know the experience of another, was led to the
insight that when we sympathetically imitate another we, by
simulating him, give rise to similar conscious states and acts and
thereby know that other person. Sympathetic imitation is therefore
a mode of cognition—we really know something of what is in the
objective world.
* * *
In the scientific line of world-steps we may also begin with

Socrates, the mental brother of the great Confucius. Perhaps
THALES (650 B.C.) may be taken as one of the first who saw a
glow in the East of a world that then lay in scientific darkness.
Then came DEMOCRITUS (died 370 B.C.) who caught a glimpse
of the Dawn. He gave definition to his understandings and
inaugurated the mechanical conception of the Cosmos, considering
it as having been built out of atoms to constitute a world machine.
There were other great Greeks who also did thinking
[page 524]
along this line, and for the first time in the world’s history
something other than insights were sought—concretely
demonstrable facts about phenomena as data with which to think!

Epilogue
COPERNICUS (1473) in his Celestial Revolutions was the

long-delayed but inevitable product of this line of development.
He put our world in its proper place in the Cosmos.
ISAAC NEWTON (1642) was the first great Height in the
mountain range of minds constituting the backbone of the world of
science. He was the discoverer of the laws of gravity and author of
the Principia, the greatest book for its time ever written –
“preeminent,” says Laplace, “above all other productions of the
human intellect.”
The further development of this line comprises the glorious
history of modern science, as outlined in Whewell’s History of the
Inductive Sciences, Mill’s Logic, Buckley’s History of Science,
Draper’s Intellectual Development of Europe, Snyder’s The World
Machine, and the modem writers.
* * *
The artistic line comprises all the great names in the Fine Arts.
* * *
The social line comprises the organizers of human affairs. It

includes all the great names in the history of Institutions, such as
those of Industry, Commerce, Government, and Social Affairs
generally.
* * *
Out of the minds of the great men of these four lines of

development came the Insights, Uplifts, Discoveries, Inventions,
Creative Works, and Deeds which constitute our civilization. The
only State of Heaven which opened to man was Consciousness.
Through that comes all that man knows, feels, and does. Our Arts
and Sciences were developed step by step by the
[page 525]
minds of these Great Persons. Revelation comes in no other way.
You cannot point to one datum of science that came otherwise than
by the mind of the man who discovered it.
To understand more fully the significance of Confucius and
Socrates, with whom this great cycle of development began, let us
remember they were the first clearly to point out the direction
necessary for the mind to take to attain unto these glories we have
achieved. From out of the many paths that were at that time
alleged to be the true ones, these World-Teachers selected not one
of them but instead pointed out a whole new path.

Epilogue
Psychurgy
Modern philosophy will admit that if the forces and conditions

that constitute and govern life are to be recognized by man, they
must reveal themselves, in some way or other, in human
experience. We must be able to know about them—they must in
some way affect consciousness. Progress, so far as it is voluntarily
directed, is due not only to a recognition of things revealed in
human experience but also to a persevering reflection about them;
and this reflection has for its purpose the gaining of wisdom
whereby we may judge between good and evil. This reflection
must be guided by a love of all that is virtuous and an aversion to
all that is evil if it would be normal and safe, and if persevered in
will ultimately lead to desirable results. Any one, according to
Confucius, may voluntarily do these things—it is THE WAY, and
the only way toward light. Progress consists in adjustments to
external things that are important to our welfare; the importance
can be determined only by the use that their recognition may have
on life. Progress is therefore inherently moral; and accordingly it
is immoral and unethical and irreligious to do that which prevents
progress. Evolution is a great moral drama; its history is an
autobiography of the human mind; and a study of it ought to reveal
just what parts of our beliefs and efforts have been a gain and what
parts a loss. To determine
[page 526]
what has been right and wrong requires a knowledge of self and its
surroundings, of what has happened in and to that self and its
surroundings. This requires systematic reflection thereon so that
with reference to our regrets and desires, our hopes and fears, our
successes and failures, we may learn wisdom. Wisdom is the
power of choosing between good and evil, through capacities
attained by perseverance in loving the good and disliking the evil.
Whether in any act we decide rightly or not, life goes on according
to its own nature, suffering the defeats due to our misjudgments
and making gains from our right judgments. But this life that goes
on of its own accord may be modified by reflection on the facts of
experience of the past and present, and this reflective activity of
the mind is called REASON. It is the general name for all those
intellective states and processes by which knowledge is acquired
and tested and applied to the government of life. Lao-tse calls it
The Way (Tao); Aristotle says that Life is Reason in operation.

Epilogue
When this operation is consciously known and can be taught as

an art and when we purposively carry on these operations of the
reason according to psychologic laws to achieve our ideals, we
have Psychurgy—but it was a long, long route from Kung and
Socrates to Modern Science and Psychurgy! Nevertheless the
teachings of these two great World-Teachers pointed straight
toward these culminations. Out of the various teachings of that
time Kung did not recommend this myth or that tradition, this
doctrine or that god, this superstition or that faith, but instead he
said virtually: “My fellow citizens, there is only one way; you must
by determined voluntary persistence adhere to the good and
continue your aversion to evil, until you acquire wisdom in judging
between them—there is no other way out.” Out of the many routes
which were alleged to be the way he selected the only one which
went in the direction of modern science. Likewise the route which
Socrates selected did not lay in the direction of mysticisms and
beliefs, or of the speculations of those who pretended to know but
did not, but in the direction of Reason striving to acquire wisdom
in judging between natural good and evil.
[page 527]
Upon this great heritage and by methods that are wholly new,
there was achieved here in America during the latter third of the
nineteenth century the culmination of the old cycle and the
beginning of another new cycle. It was seen that all reflective
effort in the life of reason, all feeling and all action whatsoever is a
mental process of conscious states. Out of related discoveries
arose an art of mind-using, which is a synthesis of all successful
methods of the past as well as an extension of them, and
comprising also new methods. If it is through the mind that all
these things have been done—if the great names, these World-
Teachers, have achieved so much by the unscientific and
unsystematized use of the mind—what may not be accomplished
by its systematized and scientifically trained use!
Psychurgy led to steps beyond Kant’s Kritik der Reinen
Vernunft; it led to the discovery of new methods of validation and
to an art of discovery. This art led to the discovery of something
different from cognition—COGNOSIS, a new domain of the
Cosmos, revealed by a new mode of knowing, whose data are not
attained by sensory perception, reasoning, or any hitherto known
mode of knowing. This new science has for its content data that
are known absolutely and not relatively, being a criterion of
truth—the first ever known to man. That wisdom for judging good
from evil which Confucius sought by maintaining perseveringly a
universal love for the virtuous and an aversion for the evil, by
meditation mingled with labor, by polishing and cultivating the

Epilogue
reason, has at last come within the domain of method. We now

know how to proceed to get a true knowledge of things rather than
words, and unceasing perseverance has led us there. Standing on
the topmost peak of the highest Height and Uplift of his time,
Confucius pointed out the direction toward which mankind should
travel. Standing on the highest peak of the highest Height and
Uplift of his time, Socrates pointed out by precept and example
that men should not pretend to know what they did not know, and
gave us the first steps in the use of concepts as a scientific method.
These first steps were the beginnings of science, the beginnings of
scientific philosophy,
[page 528]
the dawnings of a scientific religion, the first data for a scientific
fine arts, the first principles for a scientific reconstruction of social
affairs. But they were only beginnings. Many splendid steps have
since been taken; progress has become geometrically
accumulative; it has culminated in a new synthesis and a fresh
start-a method that has a basis higher than cognition, aims that are
more universal and eternal.
The world’s history contains a record of no other events as
important as the lives and thoughts and deeds of the persons who
took these great steps in the forward march of our civilization. The
insights, uplifts, discoveries, and creative works of these persons
are the actual steps in this path of progress. Old methods still
linger as survivals from the past, but they are no longer dominant
over human purposes—science now dominates. Now that we have
something more than cognition, with Insights and Uplifts
belonging to a higher Height, is it not interesting that we may look
back lovingly and approvingly on the wisdom of Confucius and
Socrates that led them to point out the direction in which we have
traveled to such splendid results? We still have with us the
priestcraft and speculation from which they turned away, but these
are modes of thought and methods that are more and more
orienting themselves by the Pole Star of scientific method. Soon
they will rely entirely on science, now that it has a criterion and
now that man’s religious aspirations find in cognosis a fulfillment
greater than expected. The prizes of life are no longer open to the
pretenders, the mystics, the credulous believers, and the followers
of beliefs: they are open only to the investigator and inventor and
creative worker who follow scientific method. Socrates and
Confucius would have appreciatively read the following extract
from a 1908 A.D. book (Minot’s The Problem of Age, Growth, and
Death):
“The scientific man has many occasions for patience. He has
to make his investigations rather where he can than where he

Epilogue
would like to. Certain things are accessible to our instincts and
methods of research at the present time, but other things are
entirely hidden from us and inaccessible at the present. We are
[page 529]
indeed, more perhaps than people of any other profession of life,
the slave of opportunity. We must do what we can in the way of
research, not always what we would most like to do. . . . Scientific
research offers its devotees some of the purest delights which life
can bring. The investigator is a creator. Where there was nothing
he brings forth something. Out of the void and the dark he creates
knowledge, and the knowledge which he gathers is not a precious
thing for himself alone, but rather a treasure which by being
shared, grows; if it is given away it loses nothing of its value to the
first discoverer but acquires a different value and a greater
usefulness that adds to the total resources of the world. The time
will come, I hope, when it will be generally understood that the
investigators and thinkers of the world are those upon whom the
world chiefly depends. I should like, indeed, to live to a time when
it will be universally recognized that the military man and the
government-maker are types which have survived from a previous
condition of civilization, not ours; and when they will no longer be
looked upon as the heroes of mankind. In that future time those
persons who have really created our civilization will receive the
acknowledgment which is their due. Let these thoughts dwell long
in your meditation, because it is a serious problem in all our
civilization today how to secure due appreciation of the value of
thought and how to encourage it. I believe every word spoken in
support of that great recognition which is due the power of thought
is a good word and will help forward toward good results.”
* * *
To this may be added the following from his manuscript on

Selves, Persons, and Cosms, in which Elmer Gates describes some
attributes of the World Worker.
“A World Worker has chosen a serious vocation—the most
serious, onerous, and difficult—but it is also the most satisfactory
and joyous because it is fundamentally normal. It is forced upon
him by the total tendencies of his nature and the demand of
[page 530]
the time. He is necessarily a pioneer. His life is not all poetry,
philosophy, meditation, research and the delights of discovery.
There are dry details, difficult duties, arduous labors, prejudices,
serious sacrifices, opposition, and the ponderous weight of the

Epilogue
world’s woe to sink deep in his soul. He will be continually

compelled to re-orient his plans to psychurgic ideals and standards.
The test or indication of a World Worker is that he must bring new
truth into the world, open new modes of efficient conduct, and
fundamentally influence human beings and affairs, and he must do
it for that purpose.
“If the World Worker reports the truth he knows and the beauty
and good he feels as truthfully and naturally and honestly as takes
place in the growing of a tree, then his work will be evolved by
Consciousness itself, and its message truly a product of the
Cosmos.
“Modern science has been wrought by so many great persons
that one feels humble to the dust when he aspires to become one of
the least of that grand list, those through whose discoveries and
work came the beginnings of epochs of progress—pioneers of the
world movement blazing the trail from civilization toward
enlightment. If we cannot all be their equals, discover a new
science or lead a nation or inaugurate an era, we can at least, now
and then, add a new fact to some science or teach a science or
invent some useful application of knowledge. In so doing we at
once enlist in that grand army whose mission is to conquer
ignorance and place alethified science, art, philosophy and religion
victorious upon the throne of an emancipated and federated world.
“Scattered over the earth throughout the centuries there have
been discoverers, thinkers, seers, workers, creators of beauty,
teachers of the higher life; they have evolved out of the existential
whole in which they were units, of whose nature they partook by
inheritance, and by whose energy they had ability and fitness for
some special service. These kings of the mind were great because
in them was a source of the greatness of The Totality—some of its
vastness.
[page 531]
“As for yourself, that which at any time will humble you most
will be the feeling that had you been better equipped and more
faithful you might have caught more of the waiting insights.
Whatever it is, you should be resolved to continue your work
fearlessly, truthfully, and without compromise with popular
prejudices or embalmed customs, according to the principles and
methods inculcated by your insights. This standard is not easy, but
you must do it if you would be a teacher. You have access to only
one mind, your own, and a World Worker resolves to write down
truthfully what his mind finds to be true of itself and of other
things, regardless of praise or blame.
“It is given to a discoverer to know just to what extent he
abandons the known for speculation. But in a far more

Epilogue
fundamental sense his consciousness knows to what extent it

actually knows. Especially in the art of consciousing has the
human mind at last arrived at knowledge that is indubitable. He
knows the truth of the discovery, and it will be borne in on his
awareness with such an impelling conviction that it will be his
life’s mission to perfect it and make it available.”
[page 532: blank]

Appendix
[page 533]
Appendix A
Taxonomy of Heurotechny
This is the taxonomy that Elmer Gates first worked out in

1912 during the ill-fated urgative dominancy described in Chapter
18.
According to this taxonomy, heurotechny is the technique for
attaining the new in knowing, feeling, and doing. The new in
knowing is more readily attained by the art called heuretotechny,
the new in feeling by heuresotechny, and the new in purposing by
that part of prognotechny called heuric telcotechny. Out of these
three branches and their sub-branches come the data that urgurgy
uses to direct its creative urgating, giving rise to heururgotechny-
the art of attaining the new in doings of a more complex kind than
in knowing and feeling, and which is subdivided into heuric
autotechny as applied to the individual and heuric sociotechny as
applied to the social organism. All doing is urgurgy and is studied
under urgotechny. The kind of doing that is new—and for the
attainment of the new—is heururgy and is studied under
heurotechny.
The taxonomy of heurotechny is given in the Synoptic
Diagram and its following explanation.

Appendix
[pages 534 & 535]]

Appendix
[page 536]
(Adapted.)
Heurotechny is the general name for our special understanding
of the pre-psychurgic stage of originality, and for the psychurgic
stages of the following: heuretotechny, or discovering;
heuresotechny, or esthesiating; misthokerdics, or livelihood and
business; heuremotechny, or inventing; poiotechny, or esthetic
creating; prognotechny, or prejudging values; and for sociotechny,
or dealing with persons.
Heuric autotechny is comprised of four arts—misthokerdics,

heuremotechny, poiotechny, and prognotechny; all are degrees and
kinds of creating. Heuremotechny is more creative than
misthokerdics, less than poiotechny, but all are creative. When a
man begins to make a living, he is creatively productive; when he
invents, he enlarges his creative power and results; when his
creative imagination gives new fine arts, he becomes still more
creative; and when he prognoses, still more. Invention is not
synonymous with creative work as often supposed, but is a degree
of creation.
Misthokerdies is used by heuremoretics just as inventions are

used as data for poiotechny, which the higher creative work uses as
tools. A creative artist or organizer uses inventions and persons as
mere materials by which he gives embodiment to his conceptions
and aims. In like manner heuric sociotechny is creative. One may
apply the processes of heuric autotechny and of heuric sociotechny
to heuretotechny and augment knowledge and do creative work of
the highest order, but discovery in itself is not invention.
One may invent a wheel and discover a new chemical, but the
former cannot be discovered nor the latter invented. A machine
may be invented; a fact or law has to be discovered, a principle
insighted. The mental processes are different. Heuretotechny is
the finding of a new thing, as when an explorer finds a new animal
or plant. The exploration may
[page 537]
require courage, skill, and money, but the mental process of
finding a new thing is the simplest kind of heuretotechuy. To
discover a new fact requires more mental ability, a new law, still
more; to arrive at a true and new principle, still more. New
insights require sophic ability. Heuretotechny creates science; and
when especially applied to it is epistemics.

Appendix
Heuresotechny studies the esthesias. A new one may rise in a

person by growth: he cannot discover it except in the sense of an
explorer of the inner world who by introspection detects an
esthesia of which he previously was unaware. Heuresotechny may
develop new esthesias in a person or train him to become aware of
more of them, may normalize and intensify them, and teach how to
utilize them.
The new in cognition (intellection, introspection, esthesis,
urgation) and the new in cognosis and the new in sophics
(philosophy and religion) are discovered by different kinds of
discovering; and in each the new in the cognic, esthic, and urgic
branches is discovered by different modes. All these differences,
hard to define, are fully recognized in this terminology. Thus there
are the cognitive, cognostic, and sophic kinds of heurotechny; and
of each kind there are three modes. Heuretotechny is the cognic
mode, heuresotechny the esthic mode, and heururgotechny the
urgic mode. Simple, is it not! But it has gradually become so after
forty years of constant improvement.
The distinction between the process of invention and the
process of discovery is complete: “heuremo” means invention, and
“heureto” means discovery. The seven kinds of creative work are
different. Heuretotechny discovers; heuremotechny takes the
discoveries and all things and knowledge and invents.
Heuresoretics leads to new esthesias; heuresoremics teaches how
best to enjoy them. Poiotechny uses all these urgids creatively
according to esthetic needs. In heuremotechny, science is the slave
of invention; in heuretotechny, invention is the slave of science;
but the two arts are never entirely disassociated. In the
[page 538]
long run science is master. Poiotechny uses both science and
invention as the tools with which to achieve the desires that are
normalized and trained by heuresotechny. Creative work aids both
science and invention. Every step in invention involves some
discovering, and every step in discovery some inventing, and in
both there may be more or less creative work.
Misthokerdics is that branch of heuric autotechny dealing with

livelihood and business. The making of a livelihood without
carrying on a business for profit is misthics. The carrying on of a
business for profit is kerdics.
Heuremotechny, the art of inventing, has three divisions.

Heuremics deals with inventing as a mode of ingenuity.
Heuremoheuretics is inventively-directed scientific research for

Appendix
special lines of invention. (Heuremics will experimentally try

everything to make a better adhesive, but heuremo-heuretics will
study the chemistry of adhesives and the physical problems
involved in cementation, and apply that special knowledge to
making an adhesive.) Heureto-heurermics deals with scientific
research from a more purely scientific interest; it applies invention
directly to methods of scientific research, hoping to discover the
conditions of human welfare in that domain.
The stage of discovery is Heuretotechny, and is comprised of

four divisions. 1) Heuretics is carried on for the advancement of
science and sophics or as a predilective passion. It is subdivided
into heurognition (original intellectuating and introspection) as
well as heurognosis and heurosophics. The heurist is looking for
contributions to scientifically-organized knowledge, for insights
and generalizations in philosophy, and for impulses and conduct as
contributions to his conscious relatedness (religion). Scientific
research and philosophic insighting become a religious duty and
worship; art and industry and science and sophics are his religion.
2) In heuretoremics the scientist applies scientific knowledge,
sophic insights, and religious feeling and impulses to the
[page 539]
improvement of the arts of inventing and discovering and creating.
3) ln heuremoretics the scientist applies scientific knowledge,
sophic insights, and religious feelings and impulses and an
improved art of inventing, discovering, and creating to training
and organizing inventors. Inventors as assistants become the
scientist’s tools of research and instruments of revelation. 4)
Heuristics studies heurists (inventors and discoverers and creative
workers generally) just as a scientist studies any other natural
phenomena, for science’s sake. Likewise the scientist studies the
Achieved Results of heurists (individual and comparative
heuristology), and organizes them.
Heuresotechny is the art by which the individual is awakened

to esthesias of which he would not have become aware, and of
developing new esthesias in the individual and the race. It is for
attaining the desirable cunesthesias and avoiding or minimizing the
undesirable kakesthesias that all cognitive urgation is carried on,
and it is solely as a guide to this urgation that cognitive knowledge
has value. To determine what are the normal esthesias for any race
is necessarily the first step in the safe and sane organization of the
heurotechnical work of that race. Heuresotechny is subdivided
into heuresoretics, the art of awakening and developing new
esthesias; heuresoremics, the art of inventing esthesic arts (fine

Appendix
arts) and devices relating thereto; and heuresics, the sophic

handling of this subject.
Poiotechny (synthetic heurotechny) is the art by which the

heurist may more happily and successfully use his abilities, money,
inventions, discoveries, and his esthesias in functionating his
whole person, periperson, and organism in creative work, as in the
fine arts or personurgy. Poiotechny is comprised of poietics, the
principles and laws of creative esthetics; heuremo-poietics, the
application of invention to creative esthetics; poio-heuremics, the
application of creative esthetics to inventing; heureto-poietics, the
application of the art of discovering to creative esthetics;
[page 540]
poio-heuretics, the application of creative esthetics to discoveries;
heureso-poictics, the application of heuresotechny to creative
esthetics; and poio-heuresics, the application of poiotechny to
heurmtechny. Leisure is needed for the best poiotechny. The
creative impulse arises out of familiarity with a subject; its truth
and utility must be known for a long time before the mind can
handle it estheto-creatively. The most efficient work in any branch
of urgotechny arises from the esthetic impulse, and this is
especially true of heurotechny; but estheto-creative work in heurics
requires a dominancy. Every urgurgy is most efficient when it is at
the same time a poiurgy.
Prognotechny considers the principles and methods of

foreknowing, or prognosis. Improvisation is a modus operandi of
arriving at new purposes, and speculation a way of arriving at new
insights. When prognosis is applied to heuremotechny, it is
prospection; to heuretotechny, it is pregnosis; and to
heuresotechny, it is prerexis.
Heuric sociotechny is the application of heurotechny to the

social group as if it were an individual—the art of more skillfully
using and more efficiently utilizing the social organism, and of the
social organism’s utilizing the individual. It is cooperative and
synmentic. It may be extended to a World Work—a movement or
line of work carried on throughout the world to bring the facilities
and best minds to bear on that work.
[End of book]


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0120321405 6789

DONALD EDSON GATES

Elmer Gates was a unique man: inventor, psychologist,

can come to a parent than to see an adult child suffer heinous

About the Author

EXPOSITION PRESS INC.

50 Jericho Turnpike Jericho, N.Y. 11753

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

Whoso gazes, even for a moment of clear vision, upon the

[page ii: blank]

by Donald Edson Gates

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

© 1971 Donald Edson Gates. All rights reserved, including the

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER:

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

The Three Messages of Elmer Gates 461

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

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Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

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Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

Origin and Development

With an enthusiasm as deep as human nature I have sought to lead

Looking back over his life in one of his frequent analyses,

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

from day to day, lured ever by the sweet anticipation of further

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

where Elmer was born on May 6, 1859, of the fourth generation in

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

the sprouting of a seed. Accordingly the “subjective” laboratory

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

serene surroundings of a farm in Ohio, unusually isolated for being

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

impulsions of his mind that tended toward new routes of

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

“The mind of youth, unhampered by outward concerns, is

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

Cryptogamia, or flowerless plants; and to discover further

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

matters of conduct upon which he had no knowledge or feelings

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

He seriously wondered if the human race had gone crazy en

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

mystery that anyone should carry on “experiments in physics in a

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

practically identical. If these two should prove to be different from

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

judgments on the part of the 10 percent at the time the matters

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

presentiment), potently lead and drive us into many of the

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

matter of knowledge. There is but one safe belief: belief in true

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

momentous and important thing in nature and whose possibilities

Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

introspecting just to feel the goings-on; and so that the thinking