Kent's Aphorisms and Precepts from extemporaneous lectures Saisie, mise en pages, traduction française et commentaires par le Docteur Robert Séror, Médecin homéopathe généraliste à f – 64400 Oloron Sainte Marie

 

(born on 31 March 1849 - New York state - Deceased 5 Jun 1916 in Stevensville, Montana).

 

A.M., M.D. Professor Materia Medica, Homoeopath Medical college, Saint Louis, 1881 – 1888, Professor Materia Medica and Dean of the Post Graduate School of Homoeopathy, Philadelphia, 1890 – 1899, Professor Materia Medica, Hahnemannian Medical college and Hospital, Chicago, 1908 – 1909, Hering Medical College and Hospital, 1909, President and Trustee Chicago Homoeopathic Hospital, Member American Institute Homoeopathy, International Hahnemannian Association Illinois State Homoeopathic Medical Society, British Homoeopathic Society (Honorary), etc..

 

"It is no proof of man's undertaking to be able to confirm what he pleases ; but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and what is false is false, this is the mark and character of intelligence."

 

Emanuel Swedenborg ( Stockholm, 29 janvier 1668 – London, 29 mars 1772)

 

Naturaliste, philosophe et théosophe suédois.

 

Ses Opera philosophica et mineralia (Œuvres philosophiques et minérales, 3 volumes, 1734) exposent ses idées sur la dérivation de la matière. Ses études en physiologie le conduisirent à écrire Œconomia regni animalis (Économie du règne animal, 2 volumes, 1741), traité dans lequel il tenta d'expliquer la corrélation entre la matière et l'âme.

 

Dans Arcana cœlestia (Arcanes célestes, 8 volumes, 1749-1756), il proposa un système religieux fondé sur une interprétation allégorique des Écritures, selon des instructions reçues de Dieu.

 

Des statistiques récentes révèlent que les swedenborgiens comptent environ cinq mille membres en Grande-Bretagne, répartis en soixante-quinze sociétés.

 

INTRODUCTION (Dr R.S.)

Voici la première partie d’une trilogie qui va se développer dans le temps (plusieurs années si Dieu me prête vie), concernant ce que l’on appelle communément les Aphorismes de Kent.

 

Ce sont des pensées, des idées philosophiques que Kent distribuait dans ses cours de MMH, dans ses conférences, ses articles et même dans les réunions scientifiques et que des élèves ainsi que des auditeurs, ont notés au fil des années. Tous ces préceptes et ces aphorismes révèlent le fond de la pensée de Kent en ce qui concerne sa philosophie, sa religion et même sa santé.

 

Si l’on pousse très loin l’analyse de ces aphorismes, on se rend compte que Kent était obsédé par la maladie qui devait l’emportait à 67 ans en 2 semaines : le mal de Bright que nous nommons maintenant l’insuffisance rénale chronique. Il est mort en deux semaines d’une crise d’urémie.

 

Dans mes commentaires, et en employant justement la loi des correspondances dont il aime souvent faire état dans la Science et l’Art de l’homéopathie (traduction française très soignée et très commentée du docteur Pierre Schmidt), je développerai cette loi des correspondances mais en regard de Swedenborg.

 

De nos jours, il aurait été sauvé par une greffe de rein ou des dialyses répétées, comme Robert Schumann l’aurait été dans ses crises de folie, grâce aux neuroleptiques associés au lithium.

 

Ces aphorismes, les voici donc en langue anglaise.

 

Je les ai numérisé puis mis en page avec soin, car la qualité de la traduction dépendra de cette numérisation d’une part, mais encore et surtout d’une pratique de Kent, de sa manière, de sa " philosophie " depuis 1965.

 

Dans une seconde partie, à venir, je les traduirai sans les commenter,

 

et enfin dans une 3 eme partie, je les analyserai et les commenterai soigneusement à la lumière des travaux de Swedenborg que l’on connaît bien maintenant.

 

Ces travaux qui semblaient oniriques il y a quelques années, deviennent tout à fait plausibles après les travaux des confrères américains tels que Moody, Richtie, Monroe, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, d’une part, et les travaux de Jurgenson et Raudive de l’autre.

 

La première chose que j’ai faite a été de numéroter les Aphorismes, ce qui n’a jamais été fait. On l’a fait pour Mozart, Schubert et Bach, pourquoi pas pour Kent ?

 

En les numérotant, je pourrai plus facilement y faire référence lors de ma traduction, mais surtout lors des commentaires, car en lisant Swedenborg d’un côté et Kent de l’autre, on voit très vite que Kent ne fait que paraphraser Swedenborg.

 

Ainsi, il y a 452 aphorismes.

 

J’ai cru bon également d’ajouter un portrait de Kent dans la force de l’âge ainsi qu’un résumé biographique de Swedenborg que j’ai pris dans l’encyclopédie Microsoft Encarta. (une des meilleures avec celle de Larousse, Hachette et Universalis, il faut avoir les 4, chacune a ses faiblesses et ses points forts).

 

Pour ceux d’entre vous qui voudrait lire une très bonne biographie de Swedenborg, elle existe en Français, écrite par un homme que j’admire beaucoup, en voici la référence :

 

Jean Prieur : Swedenborg, Biographie, Anthologie, Edtions Sorlot et Lanore, Paris, avec une bibliographie très complète de l’œuvre de Swedenborg, par Claude Bruley. Un ouvrage de 240 pages que l’on a très facilement.

 

En le lisant, vous serez très étonné de retrouver la loi des séries et des degrès de Kent, la loi des correspondances que l’on retrouve énoncées comme des lois hahnemanniennes dans la l’Art et la Science de l’homéopathie de Kent.

1. 
   Je ne saurais ternminer cette introduction sans signaler que mon Ami le Docteur Jacques Baur, de Lyon, a publié une traduction commentée des Aphorismes, en 1955 et dont voici la référence : Actes de la Société Rhodanienne d’homéopathie, fascicules II et III.
   

 

New remedies, clinical cases, Lesser Writings, aphorisms and precepts, Ehrhart and Karl, Chicago, 1926.

2. 
   Truth, on every plane, is a sword, that wounds deeply ; and blood flows freely.
   

3. 
   The more idols a man has the less able is he to receive truth. He is sick.
   

4. 
   You cannot divorce Medicine and Theology. Man exists all the way down, from his innermost Spiritual, to his outermost Natural.
   

5. 
   A truth, on any plane, presented to different men, is accepted or rejected by each according to the good or evil of his mind.
   

6. 
   The external man is but an outward expression of the internal ; so the results of disease (symptoms) are but the outward expression of the internal sickness.
   

7. 
   Everything is harmoniously working in the well man. Consider the man, heal the sick.
   

8. 
   Hahnemann's was an unusual life. He was as circumspect as a woman, and that is saying a great deal. He had a duty to perform, and could do it. Clean, honorable, noble ; a man of integrity to himself and his family.
   

9. 
   The person who loves crime lives in it. It becomes a part of his nature, and shows itself in the external man. The man who loves truth and humanity, lives in that idea, and it becomes a part of his nature, and can be seen in his looks and his life.
   

10. 
    An immense amount of hardness of heart and lack of charity is engendered by trying to accumulate a large number of "Grand Operations" without asking, "Is this for the good of the patient ?"
    

11. 
    If you lose the attitude of mind which seeks the good of the patient you will lose your Homoeopathy.
    

12. 
    If Homoeopathy does not cure sick people you are to despise it.
    

13. 
    Those who say they have tested Homoeopathy and it is a failure have only exposed their own ignorance.
    

14. 
    So long as a man relies upon the senses to settle what is scientific and what is not, and does not use his understanding, so long will he be in confusion, and Sciences will oppose each other.
    

15. 
    The Old School must know Pathology before they can treat disease, and they must have a post mortem before they can know pathology.
    

16. 
    So long as man is capable of believing that Diabetes is disease, and that Bright's Disease is a disease, so long will man be insane in Medicine. His mind is only directed toward the results of disease.
    

17. 
    It is not Homoeopathic to say "Can you cure a cancer?" or "Can you cure Epilepsy?"
    

18. 
    Technicalities are condemned in Homeopathy. Only frame in your mind that you have seen a species of Scarlet Fever, a species of Measles, or a species of Tuberculosis, or Diabetes, and speak of them as such ; that the speech may be a true outward representation of the internal thought.
    

19. 
    A physician's attitude in performing his duty to the sick, is different from that of any other person. He has a different sphere from that of the ordinary man. This is a thousand times amplified in Homoeopathy. One who has entertained that peculiar "circumcision of the heart," always looking to the good of his patient, never thinking of the criticism of man, acquires an ability to say what is right to do. He establishes a garment of righteousness.
    

20. 
    There is a state of insanity in the Sciences of the present day. They put all laws aside, in order to accept, for instance, the Molecular theory, because they want something that in its aggregate will be large enough to be felt with the fingers.
    

21. 
    If there were no Idiosyncrasy there would be no Homoeopathy. Every individual is susceptible to certain things ; is susceptible to sickness and equally susceptible to cure.
    

22. 
    Cure rests in the degree of susceptibiliness.
    

23. 
    Remedies operate as by contagion. He caught the disease, and catches the cure.
    

24. 
    Dynamic wrongs are corrected from the interior by dynamic agencies.
    

25. 
    Principle teaches you to avoid suppression. A Homoeopath cannot temporize. Those sufferings are necessary sometimes to show forth sickness in order that a remedy may be found.
    

26. 
    The affections make the man.
    

27. 
    You must see and feel the internal nature of your patient as the artist sees and feels the picture he is painting. He feels it. Study to feel the economy, the life, the soul.
    

28. 
    You cannot depend on lucky shots and guess work, everything depends on long study of each individual case.
    

29. 
    This opens a field of tedious labor, and many failures, but if once in awhile you succeed in curing one of these lost ones it is well.
    

30. 
    Memorizers have no perception ; they can only remember what they see, and they see only the surface.
    

31. 
    Memory is not knowledge until it is comprehended and used ; then grows the ability to perceive.
    

32. 
    Understand the remedy first, the keynotes last.
    

33. 
    Every ignorant man thinks that what he knows is the end of knowledge.
    

34. 
    The physician who violates his conscience, destroys his ability to perceive.
    

35. 
    What appears to be intuition comes from using that which is in the understanding.
    

36. 
    It is the imperfect machine that causes death. The Vital Force is of the Soul, and cannot be destroyed or weakened. It can be disordered, but it is all there.
    

37. 
    Man cannot be made sick or be cured except by some substance as etherial in quality as the Vital Force.
    

38. 
    It is unthinkable to speak of Motion or Force without a simple, primitive substance. Force, or action of a nothing is unthinkable.
    

39. 
    It is a serious matter to allow the mind to drift into thinking of anything but quality when speaking of force.
    

40. 
    There is nothing in the world which does not exist by something prior to itself. With the grossest materialistic ideas man can demonstrate this.
    

41. 
    There is at the present time, a continual discussion of Force as an energy having nothing prior to it. This is confusion.
    

42. 
    There is an Innermost to everything that is, or else the outermost could not be.
    

43. 
    The Simple Substance is the substance of substances, and all things are from it. It is really first, in which rests all power.
    

44. 
    Weight cannot be predicated of the Simple Substance, neither time, nor space.
    

45. 
    No power known to man exists in the concrete substance, but all power exists in the Primitive Substance.
    

46. 
    The Primitive Substance, or Radiant form of matter, is just as much matter as matter in its aggregate form.
    

47. 
    The real holding together of the things in this world is by Simple Substance.
    

48. 
    Every individual with whom you converse, has his own ideas and theories. When he questions you about Homoeopathy, you hesitate because he has not the beginnings.
    

49. 
    When he questions you about Homoeopathic facts, if you tell him what your opinion about it is he will listen to you ; but when you say it is so and so, he looks at you in wonder and doubt.
    

50. 
    Your enemy on the ground of common sense can say so much more than you can that many individuals can be reasoned away from you.
    

51. 
    Anything which looks away from exactitude is unscientific. The physician must be classical ; everything must be methodical. Science ceases to be scientific when disorderly application of law is made.
    

52. 
    Eternal Principles, themselves, are authority. The Law of Similars is a Divine Law. So soon as you have accepted the Law of Similars, so soon have you accepted Providence, which is law and order.
    

53. 
    If you do not use your Homoeopathy you will lose it. This is a responsibility so great that where one has gone into the Truth and does not make use of his knowledge, he will become like Egypt of old.
    

54. 
    The sick are entitled to exact knowledge, not to guess work.
    

55. 
    Leave names oat when prescribing. They are only for the foolish and for the boards of health.
    

56. 
    The disease is not to be named but to be perceived ; not to be classified but to be viewed, that the very nature of it may be discovered.
    

57. 
    Throw aside all theories, and matters of belief and opinion, and dwell in simple fact.
    

58. 
    The human mind should not be burdened with technicalities. They destroy description, and close the understanding.
    

59. 
    You must be able to recognize every ambassador of the internal man.
    

60. 
    A profane man can have no more idea of the sentiments of a gentle, highly religious woman, than can a lobster.
    

61. 
    The physician must see and feel, as the artist does his picture. He must perceive, by his knowledge of the human heart, that good woman's state whose religious melancholy he could not otherwise understand.
    

62. 
    Every scientific man to-day is trying to find some thing he can claim as his own. Such a man cannot understand Homceopathy. He worships himself. Has dwelt on the externals so long that it is impossible for him to think rationally.
    

63. 
    Whenever a man settles all things by his eyes, and fingers, pseudo-science and theories, he reasons from lasts to firsts ; in other words, from himself, and is insane.
    

64. 
    Man's unbelief and opinion do not effect truth. The experience which the Homoeopath has, is experience under law and confirms the law and by this order is maintained.
    

65. 
    What matters it what people think of a just man ? His reputation will take care of itself.
    

66. 
    A man, whose services are worth having, can starve in the gutter, in order that he may do good, for the love of his neighbor ; and he will acquire this power, this perception. Such a physician may realize what it is to have a duty to perform.
    

67. 
    Materia Medica never inspires perception. The physician must have the love of its use, and he becomes wise in proportion as he loves his use, and in proportion as he lives uprightly with his patients ; that is, desires to heal them ; beautify their souls. Can the physician, who does not love his neighbor as himself, get into this position ?
    

68. 
    One can never look from the toxic, to see what is in harmony with the dynamic, but may look from the dynamic to see what is in harmony with the toxic.
    

69. 
    Toxicology shows the ability, or the extent of the effects of a drug.
    

70. 
    All human beings have like possibilities of degradation ; so we cannot look down on any member of the human race. We sometimes find the lowest, characteristics that are the noblest.
    

71. 
    You cannot meditate on even the extreme of the human race. It becomes your solemn duty to heal the good, bad, and indifferent.
    

72. 
    Does any one know what Chemical Affinity is, except that certain substances seek to take a liking to each other?
    

73. 
    If it were not for the Simple Substance, such states as antipathy, sympathy, or affinity, could not be. It is the sphere of Homoeopathy to deal with these things ; to glean what is the real Esse and existence.
    

74. 
    There are two worlds ; the world of thought, or immaterial substance, and the world of matter or material substance.
    

75. 
    What reason has man to say that Energy or Force is first ? Energy is not energy per se, but a powerful substance. The very Esse of God is a scientific study.
    

76. 
    Bodies are not drawn together by means of their bodies, but by means of their Primitive Substance.
    

77. 
    The Simple Substance is the means of identification in nature. The mineral, the oak, the wheat, are all identified by their Primitive Substance, and exist, only, because of their Primitive Substance, which makes them what they are.
    

78. 
    Name everything that is, or moves ; it is sustained from, and by power of this Primitive Substance. We do not argue that it is first power, but this is first substance.
    

79. 
    Susceptibility is only a name for a state that underlies all possible sickness and all possible cure.
    

80. 
    Now when a person becomes sick, he becomes susceptible to a certain remedy, which will affect him in its highest potency ; while upon a healthy person it will have no effect.
    

81. 
    
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